The Crucible
by elphabathedelirious32
Summary: Elphaba comes home to find the Gale Force beating Fiyero and he emits a startling revelation...or a desperate attempt to save Elphaba.
1. Bloody Great

**A/N: Here's another story, yay! As always, send me a message if any references confusify (hee hee) you. Also, I have, as promised, shamelessly borrowed inspiration from Veronika Green's story _Under the Moonlight_. Read it, it's awesome. **

**Disclaimer: Wicked itself is like a giant fanfiction, which I do not own. **

Prologue

Fiyero is an _idiot_, an absolute _moron_.

Damn, he'd better be right about this.

If he's wrong, it will _not_ go well.

Well, actually, it probably won't go well anyway.

We're in Southstairs, and that absolute _genius _told the Gale Force I'm pregnant. _Moron_.

Well, it worked for Elizabeth Proctor.

…

After my horribly failed attempt to kill Madame Morrible, I ran faster than I knew I could back to my hideaway. I had no particular reason for hurrying back there, but the streets were fill of loud and noise and cheer and to run felt good in my legs, and the air clear in my lungs, and it filled me with a sense of almost surreal calm.

I could face anything.

My sense of calm lied.

I ran back to the room above the corn exchange and opened the door and froze.

Five, no six, no seven-maybe-eight, Gale Forcers stood beating Fiyero. Blood, so much blood, everywhere- my head spun in circles, dizzying me, as if _I _were the one who had lost all the crimson mercury painting the room.

"Fae," gasped Fiyero, he was alive, how could he be alive, were his veins not empty and his life covering this place in death?

I fell to my knees trying to make the room stop moving, making a small thud, but apparently distinguishable from the awful thuds of Fiyero's beating, because a Gale Forcer turned and was about to kick me hard in the stomach, pain I would gladly accept, pain I at this moment deserved, for failing, for not inflicting pain on Madame Morrible but instead bringing it down upon Fiyero, who had done nothing. But it didn't come.

"No!" screamed Fiyero with surprising strength.

"What?" asked the Gale Forcer in disbelief, astonished either that Fiyero could summon that much energy or that he dared protest at all.

"Don't do that, she's pregnant, and the Wizard would…because…" before his false reason could burst forth, he collapsed.

"Fiyero!" _No, please, not another death, no more pain on my shoulders_- I pulled myself up and half-ran to his side. _Thank God, he's still breathing, please don't let it stop- Elphaba, did you just- pray? Oh, never mind, I can't analyze my spiritual pathology right _nowI bent over Fiyero, hands hovering, searching out the worst wound, the most blood. I plugged the place spurting blood in frightening amounts with the flat of my hand, and, although on some level I was aware of it, I seemed unable to feel the pain from the tears staining my face.

"Hey, witch, get away from there," yelled one of the Gale Forcers. _Witch, I wish, then maybe I could _fix_ this!_ I thought. I began murmuring any spell from the correspondence course I'd taken that I could think of, and I suppose this scared the Gale Forcers somewhat, as they didn't drag me away until I was finished ripping a scrap from the edge of my skirt and somewhat staunching the blood flow, and it wasn't until the Gale Forcer who had spoken before pulled me up by the scarf, nearly cutting off my air, that I realized how much easier it would have been, and more effective, to have used the scarf.

Damn. He hoisted me a few feet in the air, bringing me closer to strangling. Red dots danced before my eyes, or was that just blood?

"Take them both to Southstairs," he spat, and then dropped me on the ground in a heap. I cursed him.

"And watch her," he added, looking a bit frightened of my words despite himself.

…

Words had power, I was beginning to more fully understand. And the only reason my nonsense words did was because of other words, the ones branding me a witch, and why? Because the Wizard had said, probably, or maybe they'd just guessed. Fiyero had said the same when he first saw my hideout, after all.

Their cruel rumors lent me power. People say that insults are only to make the tormentor feel more powerful, but at least where I was concerned, they were quite wrong. If I was to be called a witch, then I would use it to my advantage.

And if I was to be called pregnant, well, that might not hurt. Well…now…but right or wrong on Fiyero's part, it was going to turn around and bite me in the butt sooner or later. And curiously, I was finding I somehow hoped, not just for my sake and Fiyero's, but really hoped, he was right.

Damn. What was I thinking? I needed wine. Or coffee. _Shit._ What was I _thinking_?


	2. Southstairs

**A/N: Sorry, it's been a while. But here you are, chapter two. Please review. If I have low self-esteem, it'll be ALL YOUR FAULT! **

**Disclaimer: It…gasps…isn't….mine….sobs**

"What kind of _idiot _does something like that?" I whisper-yelled at Fiyero, at the same time bandaging another of his wounds with one of my scarves.

"The kind of idiot who _loves_ you, and thinks what he said maybe might be true," he said, then repeated it, as if it were just dawning upon him, "I _love_ you, Elphie-Fabala-Fae. I do."

"And I love you, but if you'd listened to me, we-"

"We wouldn't be together. You'd be here, alone, or dead, and I would be nothing better than a dead man without you."

I leaned my head against the cold stone wall and hit it three times.

"Ow."

"Well, don't _do_ that, then."

I smiled creepily and cackled.

"I like pain."

"You do not."

"Fine, I don't. But I have nothing better to do, and some sensation is better than none at all."

"Well…there are…other…sensations," said Fiyero, smiling mischievously. I couldn't help it. I nearly imploded.

"Like entertainment, rolling around like- like- dumb beasts in front of everyone? Fiyero, what do you take me for? That's disgusting, it's abhorrent, it's repulsive-"

"All right, all right, Fabala-Fae, shh," he said. Then- "I thought you were obsessed with Animal equality."

"_A_nimals are neither dumb nor the modern conception of beasts, Yero, that's the _point_!"

"I know," he said, grinning. "I just wanted to make sure you were still you." Suddenly, I was just exhausted. Everything- the failed assassination, Fiyero's blood covering me in fear, the guards, the maybe-pregnancy, Southstairs- just hit me all at once and drained my energy down to nothing. I smiled sleepily.

"Don't worry," I said. "I didn't manage to change my skin color despite pressure from all corners, the inside of me is hardly wont to be any less stubborn." Fiyero smiled back at me.

"I like your skin," he said. He wrapped his arms around me and I wrapped mine around him, and we huddled together beneath the thin blanket on the small pile of straw in the corner. And we slept like that, innocently tangled together, but safe with one another.

As I lay there, waiting for the sweet oblivion of sleep, I examined my feelings about this baby that might or might not be within me even now. I wasn't naïve enough to have some sentimental idea of a being that would love me always and forever, nor even I it, necessarily, for I knew better than anyone that parent-child relationships don't always turn out that way. _Yet_, I thought, _I would be different, and so would Fiyero_. It was interesting to imagine myself as a mother. I knew that the color of my baby's skin wouldn't interfere in either of its parents' feelings for it. I knew I wouldn't get addicted to pinlobble leaf paste, for I'd grown up detesting everything about it, its smell, its look, everything- a hatred I'd learned in my just-over-eight-years of knowing Melena. I knew Fiyero would be fully present in our lives, or at least I hoped so, but he wouldn't be off in some Other Land even if he wasn't physically present. And he would never use our baby as an object lesson. I knew I'd probably talk to the child more or less as an adult. Baby talk has always made me want to vomit. No wonder infants spit up so often.

We fell asleep, and when I woke, unsure of what hour or even what day it might be, heavy with the weight of my hours of sleep, it was several moments before I realized that Fiyero and I were not alone.

I had built the Wizard up in my mind to be something _other_, something immutably separate from me, someone I had nothing in common with and never would, someone strong and forceful and all-encompassingly evil. Not a man my father's age, slightly stooped with the weight of crushing an entire country beneath your heel, but looking less an evil dictator than an absent-minded, benevolent, professor.

_No. _

The word "professor" was one my conscience could never allow me to associate with the Wizard. Dr. Dillamond, he was my professor, and even Dr. Nikidik, with his misguided lessons in objectification and dehumanization, for lack of a better term. All language is biased towards humans, I've noticed. But they were professors, and Miss Greyling, and the term represented for me the happiest days of my life. Days, mind you, not nights. But they could not be applied to _him_, my archenemy, not him, the root of evil, at least in my soul- no. Not soul. I slipped. Heart, mind, whichever.

But there was the Wizard, right there in our cell. He may have been…less…than I expected, but I loathed him no less because of it. I mustered up my most defiant glare even as I subtly kicked Fiyero to wake him.

"Hello, Elphaba," said the Wizard ominously, and I realized the root of the word 'hello.'

Damn.


	3. A Hideous Monstrosity

**A/N: This chapter contains a dream sequence _and _a flashback sequence. It starts two days _after_ the Wizard came in, but you do find out what happened. So try not to get confused. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Wicked, but I do own the same green makeup they use on Broadway! Hah! (although the fact that they sold this stuff in regular make-up stores even before Wicked is a little…weird…but cool!) **

_There was pain flooding me. It radiated from my soul to my fingertips- NO! This ordeal was not going to knock down my carefully crafted spiritual defensive pathologies, too! I couldn't think. The pain, oh, God, there was nothing like it- No, I did again! But it was rich and full, the pain, filling all the empty spaces in me, spaces growing as the baby pushed its way from inside of me. _

_I gritted my teeth against the pain that threatened to halve me, and to have my life- it happened to my mother, it could happen to me, Elphaba shut your damn brain up and _concentrate_! Fiyero's face, blurry with the involuntary stinging tears clouding my burning eyes, appeared above mine. _

"_Push, Fabala," he urged, shoving to the front of my mind an image of my father and mother during Shell's birth, an event that I, just turned nine years old, had snuck in to see. _

"_Don't-call-me-that-now!" I screamed, and then it came. I pulled myself up to look between my legs at what had come out of me, and the misshapen face of a monster grinned at me, its bared fangs having nearly bitten through my womb before it emerged, so that even now the space that had once held this facsimile of a child was filling with my blood and killing me slowly. _

"Aaaaaah!" I woke up screaming. It had been two days, more or less- it was hard to tell in Southstairs- since the Wizard had come, and I'd had this nightmare as many times. Fiyero came awake beside me. I flailed and thrashed, trying somehow to shake the dream- or the child itself- free of me. "Fae- Elphaba- please," he begged, trying to pin down my wheeling arms. I tried, too, but I'd lost control of myself. Finally, Fiyero managed to grab hold of my wrists. He pulled me up, wrapped me tightly in his arms so that I couldn't move, and stroked my hair until I could breathe again.

"What scares me the most," I whispered, "isn't how the child looks, or that some would call it evil, or that it might kill me, but-" I reached deep inside myself and pulled out my deepest fear- "But that I wouldn't love it- just- because of- what it looks like, or because before even birth it did something it couldn't control," I stopped. "I'm afraid," I said, "that I will be just like my parents."

"Did what the Wizard said really affect you so much?" asked Fiyero.

…

Two days earlier, when I had awoken to find the Wizard in my cell, this nightmare had begun.

"Hello, Elphaba," he said.

"What the hell do you want?" I asked, glaring as I kept nudging Fiyero with my foot. _What is taking you so long? Climb out of whatever dirty fantasy you're having and back into reality!_ I thought, as if Fiyero and I could communicate telepathically.

"What do I want?" asked the Wizard, smiling evilly. As he opened his mouth, to tell me or to taunt me, I kicked Fiyero hard, and he finally awoke.

"Elphie? Wha-?" he began, then he saw the Wizard.

"What the hell do you want?" he asked.

"Good question," I said back. "Now how about you answer, Your Assholeness?" I spat.

"You're in no position to be making demands," said the Wizard.

"On the contrary, I've got nothing to lose," I replied.

"What about your life?" asked the Wizard. Involuntarily, my hand went to my abdomen, splaying across it protectively, and I felt a tiny tremor of fear snake its icy tendril up my spine. Nonetheless, I revealed no emotion.

"Like I said, nothing to lose," I answered, superficially calm. Behind me, so close my back met his chest, I felt Fiyero tense. I nudged his calf with my foot to signal him that I didn't mean it, even though I halfway did.

"What about your lover?" asked the Wizard.

"Damn you," I said, "leave him out of this, he's done nothing!"

"He loves you, though I can't imagine why," said the Wizard, "That's enough."

"Shut up," said Fiyero. A guard lurking behind the shadows burst forth at some signal and reached out with a club and knocked Fiyero out, sending him flying to the ground.

"No!" I screamed, and lunged at the Wizard, but the guard pulled me back and threw me roughly against a stone wall. My arms flew to protect my stomach and I hit the all. Hard, but sideways. I fell to the ground and the Wizard yanked me forward by my hair across the floor until I was on my knees in front of him. Tears were pouring down my face, it stung like hell, but there was no stopping them, apparently my tear ducts were the only normal thing about me. Great.

Fiyero stirred on the ground. His eyes opened slightly, but no one else noticed. I breathed a sigh of relief. But the Wizard pulled me up by the hair until my face was next to his.

"Your baby," he hissed, "will be a hideous, maldeformed, inhuman aberration unfit to exist, and I will allow you to carry it to term just for the pleasure of the physical and mental agony it will bring you and itself!" He brought his face closer to mine. "It will kill you slowly, nearly biting its way free of you, with its monstrous fangs," he whispered. "And when it is born, you will not be able to bring yourself to love it, it will be so hideous-"

"I will, I will love it, I don't care what it looks like as long as it is nothing like you on the inside, you black-hearted _monster_!" I screamed at him.

"You will not!" he screamed back at me. I spat at him. He slapped me hard across the face, raking my cheek with his nails and shoving me backwards. I shrieked in agony as the salty, wet tears mingled with the blood on my face. He pushed me again and I toppled, but Fiyero dragged himself up and caught me. Breathing hard and sobbing, I held onto him like a lifeline, and he to me, as his tears flowed out and mingled with my bloody ones, burning me, burning us both somehow, and the Wizard left us to our misery.


	4. Everything is Nothing, Nothing is Real

**A/N: This is kind of short, but oh well. I'm changing my penname, incidentally, so you'll find this story under either elphabathedelirious32 or fabalafae32. Or, you know,_ its_ name…**

**Disclaimer: Not mine…sobs…trips over chair…ow. **

What might have been the next day, or maybe night, after my dream (for the days and nights are a murky melding in Southstairs), Fiyero and I finally managed to stop alternately shaking and crying. I had lost all the feeling in my face.

But when I woke up, I knew I was done.

"That's it," I said. "No more."

Fiyero cleared the sleep from his eyes. With all the crying, they must burn as much as mine, with that sweet, natural, ache of relief that comes after tears release all the feelings that sting your soul into simple physical pain. Ah, damn. I slipped. Just forget it, Elphaba, ignore yourself.

"No more what?" asked Fiyero.

"No more of this," I said, gesturing vaguely. "No more listening to _him._ I've never done it before, why start now?"

Fiyero smiled slowly.

"There you are," he said softly.

"What?"

"You're _you_ again. Determined. Defiant."

"Damned?" I interjected. He groaned.

"No, you're not! You're a good person, Fae, and besides that, I think you _have _got a soul. I think you _do _believe in a God- just maybe not your father's."

"Whom, then? Lurline, a silly, forgetful, fairy woman who unfailingly reminds me of Galinda of the Arduennas when she first arrived at Shiz?"

"No, _Kumbricia_," said Fiyero, sarcastically, yet somehow also as if he were coming upon a revelation of his own. "I think the reason they call God unnamed is because- He's different for everyone."

"That's a better argument for the idea of deity as a panacea than otherwise."

"No! Not like that…just…your _perception_ of deity, not God himself."

"A good revelation," I said. "But that doesn't mean I've changed my mind." _It doesn't mean I haven't, either, _I thought to myself.

"Yet," said Fiyero, echoing the other thought racing unbidden through my head.

Suddenly, I whirled around to face him, angry.

"Why have you become my father all of a sudden?" I cried. "You've said yourself you're 'spiritually anemic,' what're you doing trying to give me a metaphorical blood transfusion?"

"Exactly what I'd do if you needed a real one," he said seriously. "I've lost a lot of blood, Fae-Fae, but if you needed it, I'd give every drop."

"No!" I yelled, railing against it. "You shouldn't!"

"I wouldn't care."

"I'm not real! I'm nothing!" I screamed forcefully. Fiyero grabbed me and kissed me hard, as if anchoring me to this world.

"You are _everything_!" he screamed back at me, grabbing my wrists and not letting go.

"Then everything is nothing, and nothing is real," I said quietly, and he let go, and we embraced.


	5. Welcome

**A/N: Here comes another update. I have an incredible amount of homework. I could lock the Wizard in a closet by piling all this boring stuff I have to do against the door…**

**Disclaimer: It's not mine, even if Gregory Maguire does emit a certain sadism when it comes to Elphaba. **

It was three long months of boredom and philosophical discussions before anything of note occurred again. My stomach was swelling just the tiniest bit, but it was more noticeable because the rest of me seemed to be shrinking. What little food we got was so thoroughly unappetizing that I could barely have stomached it were I not in this condition, and as it was I threw up reflexively, regularly, several times a day, and I looked anorexic, though if someone were to have put a plate of real food in front of me I might very well have eaten the plate itself.

One morning when I was throwing up, and Fiyero was holding back my hair the way he always did, the Wizard sent a guard into our cell. Neither of us noticed, for our backs were turned as Yero helped me purge my stomach.

The guard cleared his throat. I retched one last time an we turned around.

"I'm to take Elphaba Thropp to the Wizard," said the guard a bit uncomfortably.

"No," said Fiyero, "you're not. Can't you see she's ill?"

"I don't care," said the guard.

"I'll go," I said.

"I'm coming," replied Fiyero instantaneously.

"No. Stay here. It's all right, I'll be back," I said, reaching out and kissing Fiyero before turning to leave with the guard. I turned back again, suddenly, halfway out the door. When I spoke, I meant it for Fiyero, and the guard, and even the Wizard, wherever he was.

"I am," I said slowly, firmly, "coming back. No matter what." Fiyero nodded.

The guard yanked me out of the cell and pulled me roughly by one arm along a candlelit corridor.

"What does he want? The Wizard, I mean?" I asked. The guard just gave me a look and kept pulling on my arm.

There are so many corridors in Southstairs. We traced our miserable way through them, dank, dim, and dripping with brackish water I wouldn't have touched even if it didn't burn. Finally, when I sensed we were far beneath any street walked upon by the "free" citizens of Oz, beneath even the subterranean bulk of Southstairs, we emerged into a brightly lit, clean, gilded tunnel and began to climb an innumberable amount of stairs. I blinked furiously, my eyes having grown unaccustomed to such light. As we climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed, my legs began to ache, and my arm to complain from the guard's incessant yanking.

At last, he pulled me down a hall and stopped before a pair of awe-inspiring mahogany doors, carved with images of men crushing animals and probably Animals. It gave me great pleasure to fall down and vomit on them.

The guard jumped back as though I'd heaved up acid, and pounded on the door from as far away from me as it was possible to get while still holding my wrist.

"Calm down, dearie, I don't bite," I said, cackling. "Much."

The guard's eyes darted fearfully. When the imposing doors opened, he thrust me inside and dashed down the hall, hopefully making it to a bathroom before wetting his pants in fear and relief.

"Miss Elphaba," said the Wizard from behind his desk, smiling as eerily as I ever had, "Welcome to hell."


	6. Weaknesses

**A/N: Another update. I love late arrival days! Anyway…**

**Disclaimer: It's not mine…WAAAAAAAAAAH!**

"But before I begin destroying everything you ever thought you knew about your life, or anything else," he said, "allow me to ask you a few questions about some items that the Gale Force found in your little love nest." He paused a moment. "Actually, you don't have to 'allow' me. If you don't, I can kill Fiyero and pull your fetus out of you while you watch yourself begin to die."

I sat there stonily for a moment. What could he have found in there that he'd care about? Nothing from the Resistance, no, all that I'd hidden somewhere else. I wasn't stupid. Nothing to suggest anything other than the home of an odd young woman and the occasional resting place of a slightly gilded young man. Pots, pans, plates, food…milk, the thought of which now was disgusting…my other dress, a set of Fiyero's clothes, my nightdress, the bed, Fiyero's opera cape, my cloak, fallen off as I ran to his side to stop the bleeding…the elephant skull, bones, books…I couldn't think of anything.

From the sack, the Wizard drew out an item. He glanced at it as though he had never seen it before, and I realized he must not even have looked through the bag before dragging me here.

"What's this?" he asked, pulling his hand away. I recognized it instantly- the glass I've had since the day I could speak, the one Turtle Heart made for me so long ago. I'd forgotten I kept it there, that I'd taken it with me to the Emerald City. But then I had been planning, as a backup, to disappear.

"What is it?" asked the Wizard impatiently.

"It's a toy," I half-lied. "I've had it since I was not quite two. It was given to me by…by a friend of the family."

I was just short of three years old when he died, and Nessarose was born. I didn't understand what was going on.

"I've just always kept it," I added.

He harrumphed and pulled out the black-fringed scarf from the Vinkus. "And this?" he asked.

I could feel my face get hot, and I knew it was turning forest green.

"It's a scarf," I said, to be annoying.

"I had figured that out, Elphaba," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Fiyero gave it to me."

The Wizard's eyes gleamed.

"Is it used for any special purpose?" he asked, putting the pieces together.

He just wanted to humiliate me. Well, you can only be humiliated if you allow it to happen. So I didn't.

I raised my eyes to his and smirked.

"Yep."

"What?"

I just glanced down at my belly, then back at the scarf, still smirking.

He sighed and set it down.

"And what about-" he froze when he saw what was in his hands. His eyes and voice turned to icy fire. He held up my mother's green bottle. I'd forgotten, too, that on the day of Ama Clutch's funeral, Nanny had pressed it into my hand, before Grommetik led us away to be drafted into the service of the despicable man sitting across from me.

"In case I go too, my pretty," Nanny had whispered, giving me the bottle. My hand had closed automatically around it. "Someone ought to know the story," she'd said. "That was your mother's, and-" And then we'd been interrupted, by something I no longer remembered. But thinking about those times just made me nostalgic, and in my opinion not only did nostalgia sound like a disease, it was one.

"Where the hell did you get this?" the Wizard demanded in a low voice, a low, cold voice.

"It was my mother's," I glared at him suspiciously. "Why?"

He stared at it for a moment, and then, slowly, turned to rest his heartless blue eyes on me.

"How old are you?" he asked.

_What the hell?_ I thought.

"Twenty-three," I answered slowly. "Why the hell-?"

"No," he said suddenly, "no! Damn it! I don't care!" He threw the green bottle against the wall. It shattered into a hundred pieces. Green liquid choked with tiny fragments of glass dripped down the white wall and into the carpet. For the first time I realized how odd it was, this island of colorlessness in the Emerald City. And then I realized what he had just done. I wanted to scream, to shout, _That was my mother's! What is wrong with you? _ But I didn't. I sat there calmly.

"Now why," I asked after a moment, "would you want to do that?"

He recovered a shadow of his eerie smile.

"Because," he answered, "I could." He leered at me. "Anything of yours, Elphaba, I can destroy. You have nothing. You _are_ nothing. I _own _you."

"Well, then, according to your own logic, you own nothing, so why don't you cut your losses and leave me alone?" I requested.

He expected a rise out of me. Well, I've never been one to give people what they expected.

"You don't appear to understand, Elphaba. I could torture you, until you miscarry-"

"Well, maybe you should!" Despite myself, my voice was trembling. "I don't want my baby born here, in prison, to be used against me for your own sick amusement!"

The moment after I said it, I knew I'd made a mistake. Even saying, "my baby," was a mistake. I had let him know I cared about the child I was going to have. It was _not _in my plan for him to know that. Actually, nothing was in my plan, because I didn't have one right at this moment. But had I had a plan, that would NOT have been included. Damn.

He grinned, and the twisted sadism in it was disgusting.

"Well, well," he said, "what a shock. Miss Elphaba, by all accounts cold and unfeeling-"

"Have you asked Fiyero? Because I doubt he'd agree," I shot back at him.

He just smirked and went on.

"she _cares_ about her baby! Well, now," he said, smiling even more demoniacally, "then it'd just be a _shame _to kill that baby before she gets a chance to hold it. That is," he leaned forward, hissing, to remind me of my nightmare, "if she can even bear to."

"Shut the hell up," I said quietly. "I don't care if my baby's a werewolf, a monster, green, blue, pink, or even the spitting image of _you_," he looked oddly nervous at this point- "I'll love it anyway. I AM NOT MY FATHER!" I screamed, and for a moment, was that actually fear I saw in his eyes? "Nor my mother," I added, more calmly, "and I never will be." His wavering expression righted itself. He'd discovered another weak spot. I cursed myself.

"You know, Elphaba," he said in a low, soothing, tone, "you've got a face not even your mother loved."

"And now Oz is controlled by a pouting five-year-old, this one without a regent, how lovely," I said.

"They hated you."

"Oh, they did not."

"They loved Nessarose more."

"So what? So did I."

He was twisting a knife in my heart, but my resistance was wearing on him.

"You're a nasty little aberration," he said.

"Well, the rest of humankind disgusts me, so an aberration of _their _nature I'm proud to be," I responded.

"Bitch."

"Bastard."

He stood as if to strike me, but he chortled maniacally instead.

"When are you planning on starting the destruction of my life? Because I'd really like to get back in time to eat and vomit up that disgusting 'food' before dusk," I said.

He made a growl-like sound low in his throat, and suddenly he leapt onto the desk with surprising agility. He pinned my arms to my sides before jumping off the desk and twisting one arm behind my back. My mind screamed in pain, but my training in the Resistance kept my mouth shut.

"No?" said the Wizard. "Well, I doubt anyone has taught you a technique for resisting your own especial weakness."

"What?" I asked.

"Water," he said, smiling sadistically.


	7. Learned Fears

**A/N: Sorry I haven't updated- I need to stop apologizing so much, yeesh, I'm disgusting myself- but DING DONG, THE ODYSSEY PROJECT IS nearly DEAD! That starts me on a whole new train of thought about what would happen if a house fell on my sister…who I'm mad at…actually, this isn't her fault…my dad was all obsessive over her making Bronze Honor Roll. I make high school honor roll every quarter, and no one makes a fuss…you know what? This will help me with my monologue…I get to be green Saturday! YES! **

**Disclaimer: Sadist, sadist…**

_Water. _

_It's beautiful in the sunlight, dappled with gold piercing the clear liquid, a pattern unmatched by any human hands could make. _

_In the rain, it's icy and cold, and it cleanses the world, and after the storm, it bands together every color there is and throws them across the sky. _

_It takes on different forms, but it remains the same. _

_It's inside every one of us. (Is it in me?) _

_It hangs in the air. (How do I breathe?)_

_It rained the day I was born. But for years after that, no water touched the fields of Munchkinland, except during Nessarose's birth. _

_Is it odd? _

_Incredibly. _

_I was born in the rain, that much I know, and that I was born outside. _

_But I don't know if I got wet. _

_I only know that if you throw a baby in the water, it's supposed to know, instinctively, how to swim. _

_But, instinctively, I avoided the problem altogether. _

_I remember being all but two years old, and so afraid of water I'd never go near the lake until, one night, I did, in search of a place where I could see a deeper danger. But that's not important right now, at this moment. _

_What's important is: _

_I wasn't afraid to touch hot glass. _

_I wasn't afraid of falling. _

_I wasn't afraid of the dark. _

_I wasn't afraid of the woods. _

_I wasn't afraid of Tigers or Dragons. _

_People say all fear is learned. _

_Well, then where did I learn to be afraid of WATER? _

He took a bucket full of water, an eyedropper, a spoon, a bowl.

I tried to laugh. It didn't work.

A sick feeling bubbled up in my stomach. _What if…No! Elphaba! Be positive! _

Ew. I could not believe I'd just thought that. It was something Glinda would say. Glinda…I wondered, now, if I'd ever see the bubbly spoiled little society girl again. I'd been resigned to never seeing any of them again, but now…

_Focus, Elphaba. _

"You know," I said. "the purpose of torturing someone is generally to gain information from them."

"Ah, Miss Elphaba," he answered. "Are you really still so naïve as to believe that everything is done for a purpose?"

"Some kind of a purpose," I replied. "Even just satisfying your sick, twisted, sadism. And I am _not _naïve."

"Hm," he said. "Well, what you think won't matter in a few moments."

"So that's it," I asked. I wanted to plead, to beg for him to wait until the baby was born, but there was no way in hell I was letting him see that. "You're just going to kill me? To be honest, I'm disappointed in you," I went on. "I'd expected you to do one of the truly twisted things you mentioned earlier."

"I'm sorry to let you down," he said. "But then, we don't know just what this water will do to you, do we? Will you die instantly? Will it scald your skin down to nothing? Will you come a normal color? Will you melt away, and if you do, will your monstrous little fetus lie there in a bloody puddle of water and amniotic fluid? I'm rather curious."

"You're _sick_." I spat at him. "You're disgusting. You're a _psychopath_!"

He laughed a horrible, terrible laugh.

"Maybe," he said. "After all, I am your father."

I projectile vomited all over him.


	8. Truth

**A/N: Yeah, I know it's been awhile. But I am DONE with the Odyssey project! Done, I tell you! And now I will use it against Jeff in his quest to rule the world (how I have no idea, but I will. That and ethanol as fuel. Go Brazil! Everyone else: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!) **

**Disclaimer: I'm not a sadist. This chapter may seem like it, but really I'm not. If I were, would I let her and Fiyero- oh, never mind, read the darn chapter. **

What happened next was a reflex. The bucket of water he was holding came tumbling through the air, turning, arcing, and pouring itself-

-It was cold. Burning ice. My entire body was crying painful tears. For several eternities, I was in hell. Then- I wasn't.

I wiped the water from my eyes so I could see, spat it out of my mouth. I felt somehow- cleansed. Calm. Pure. I don't know…something.

"What?" I asked, and neither of us was entirely sure what I was referring to.

"How?" I tried.

"Very well," said the Wizard. "Better I destroy the truth with my psychological torture than a lie."

_O-kay. _

He sighed. "When my balloon _first_ landed in Oz, it was really a year and a half before I came to the Emerald City."

"More than that," I interrupted.

"Fine, then. Maybe more like two and a half years," he answered, glaring at me. "I crash-landed in a nearly deserted field, but I could see some sort of building from where I was.

"When I reached it, there was a woman in the courtyard, singing, as she collected laundry off her clothesline-"

He peered at me a moment. I felt my face go dark green under his scrutiny, as if my skin cells had learnt to make themselves darker, as if to block out stares, after enduring so many.

"How could I not have seen it?" he murmured. I assumed he was talking about Melena. Well, if so, he _shouldn't _have noticed any resemblance. My mother had been beautiful. She'd looked like Nessie, not like me. But then he continued.

"She was beautiful, and all alone. We drank green elixir, and-"

"I still view my mother from the perspective of an eight-year-old, and besides I suspect that's not the sort of thing anyone _ever_ wants to hear about their mother, so if you could refrain?"

"And- after- I left. I wandered Oz awhile. I stayed above a corn exchange in the Emerald City for a time, observing the political dynamic from the shadows-"

Okay, _ew. _I needed to sanitize myself. That was incredibly…disconcerting.

"And finally, when I was ready, I rode back to Munchkinland on the back of a tinker's cart and got my balloon back up in the air. I flew to the Emerald City. I came, I saw, I conquered."

I looked at him and laughed.

"'Isn't this punishment enough?'" I mimicked my- Frex,- pointing at myself. Then another irony struck me.

"So you stuck this thorn in your own side, did you?" I cackled.

He smiled, not nicely.

Damn, if Frex wasn't my father, how much lower could I have gotten?

Suffice it to say, this was _not _an improvement.

At least the Wizard hated me on my own merit.

"Now," he said, and snapped his fingers. The sound echoed eerily. A door creaked open. Four Gale Forcers entered.

"Just don't make her miscarry," said the Wizard. "I want to see if black widows really do eat their young."

"They don't," I said. I would have added that it was their mates they ate, but a child could see _those _ramifications.

The Wizard dismissed my correction with a wave of his hand.

"I'm _not _going to eat my baby, you sociopath," I said.

"Well, at least we know where _you _get it from," he replied indifferently. The guards, apparently, were too beef-brained to grasp those implications. The Wizard snapped his fingers again, irritably. The guards looked confused.

"But, we're already here," one said.  
"Go! Torture! For Oz' sake!" the Wizard yelled, settling back in his chair.

"Sadist bastard," I muttered.

There was pain, and blood, but I was floating out of myself.

_You know what this proves the existence of, don't you? _

_Consciousness. _

_No, Elphaba, the soul. _

_No- wait! I refuse to argue with myself. _

_Almost right. Not yourself. Your-_

_Don't go there. _

_Too late. I'm part of you. You've already thought it. _

_Can I go back to the blood and excruciating pain now? _

When they'd almost stopped the beating, I came back to myself. I could feel my lower lip swelling and my mouth tasted of coppery blood and vomit. My left arm hurt like hell, they were still twisting it behind my back. My legs were bruised from their kicks, and I was pretty sure my right ankle was broken. It hurt to breathe. One of them gave my arm a yank, and I cried out involuntarily.

"Tell me I am the right and true ruler of Oz, and you owe me obedience and loyalty. Tell me you are my subject! Tell me I own you!"

"You are…" I began, gasping for breath. He looked at me expectantly. "full to the brim with utter _shit _if you think for one _second _that those disgusting words would ever pass from my lips, you bastard!"

He slapped my already bruised cheek, at the same time as the Gale Forcer yanked on my arm and I heard it snap. An earthquake of pain roiled through me and tears spilled down my cheeks. The burns they gave me were balm in comparison with the fire raging through my arm and in my cheek.

"You're nothing," said the Wizard. "You're useless. No one loves you, Elphaba, and I can make it worse. I can make you the most hated person in all Oz."

"Go the hell ahead," I gasped.

"Fiyero doesn't love you."

"_Liar!_"

"You're a nice distraction, a vacation from duty-"

"You're wrong!" I was handing him my weaknesses on a silver platter and I didn't care. I was screaming and my right arm was flung across my abdomen. I started shaking in uncontrollable paroxysms. The guards looked frightened.

"That's enough," said the Wizard. "Take her back."

As I was led out of the room, I wasn't so out of it that I didn't notice he looked as pained as I did.

…

When they led me back down to my cell, I had no grasp of how long I'd been gone. Fiyero stood, grasping the bars, as I was brought down the hall. His mouth flew open in shock as I came into the light, and I could see myself through his sapphire eyes: A malnourished green girl, a green that was no longer so noticeable, for all the tautness of her skin, the sallowness of hunger, and her bruises- her dark dress hanging off of her, except where it clung to her just slightly bloated stomach. You could count her ribs through the fabric. Her long dark hair was a tangled mess. Her dark eyes looked overly large and haunted. Her defiance and pride were things of the past; it was a weary stubbornness that kept her going. Her lower lip was swollen and bleeding, her cheeks were dark with bruises, as were her arms and legs. Her left arm hung loose and broken, and she limped. She was weak on her feet and looked about to faint- or die.

I didn't like this girl.

The guard opened the door and shoved me in. Fiyero caught me and kissed me, drinking my blood, accidentally, mashing my lip.

"Sorry."

"It's all right. _I'm _all right."

"I love you," he said, staring into my eyes fiercely again.

"I know. I really do."


	9. Elphaba Analyzed

**A/N: Okay, there's a little bit I needed to add here, so everything in italics is the Wizard's POV. Unless, you know, it's just emphasis on something Fiyero or Elphaba is talking about. **

**Disclaimer: Sadly, not mine. **

_How could I not have seen it? Look at her. _

_The way she moves, that's where I see Melena. Proud and almost royal, straight-backed yet with a certain rhythmic grace. _

_Yet there's a certain ungainliness to her, to Elphaba, as if she hasn't quite grown out of adolescence. That I recognize too; I worked for years to overcome the last vestiges of the trait in myself. _

_Her black hair and dark eyes are her own, although her hair reminds me of my own mother's. Some of her spit and fire, too. She's green, of course; maybe that's why I never noticed, it makes it hard to see her for herself. Her features, well. The imposing nose comes from my mother. The mouth is Melena's, although quite unfamiliar, twisted into pain or smirking with sarcasm. _

_Her isolationism and defiance- as hard as she'd hit me for saying it- are mine. _

_Back in my own world, I was as much an isolate as she for something I could control no more than she can the color of her skin. It was because I was Irish- from the Emerald Isle. Here, for her, it is because she _is _emerald. And her defiance- I once spit in the eye of a man who refused to hire me because I was a "Paddy." _

_She's strong, woven of steel. _

_I won't be able to bend her. _

_I'll have to break her. _

_Melt her down, if you will. _

I told Fiyero the story of my torture session. We sat together, living off of each other's heat. Winter must still be in full force. Whistling winds blow mercilessly above us, we could hear them moaning over the openings to the street in Southstairs' ceilings, masked as sewers. Snow gathered and melted- some days not- and joined the dirty pools of wet dankness in the corridors whose very proximity made my bones ache. The Gale Forcers had ripped the sleeves of my dress in beating my arms, and I couldn't stop shivering. Besides that, I was drenched in cold water mixed with blood and vomit. On second thought, maybe _that _was making my bones ache. Fiyero pulled off his light overshirt and wrapped me in it.

"Don't get sick," he said.

"I'm _fine_," I answered.

"Fae!" he shouted suddenly, "You _shouldn't_ be fine! You're freezing and starving in a rathole prison, you're pregnant, you're soaking wet and badly beaten and you've just found out that your _father _is the madman who did this to you!"

"Except the pregnant part, because that would be sick," I replied.

"Stop being flip!" He grabbed my arms, accidentally making me wince, and pulled us down until we were sitting on the pile of straw that served as our bed.

"Listen to me," he said intensely, "You need to realize that this is serious-"

"I _know_, I know it's serious, don't talk to me as though I were I child, I couldn't abide it even when I was one!"

"I'm sorry. I didn't want it to sound like that. I just worry about you, you know, even if you pretend to be above human concerns."

"I'm not." He knew more about me than anyone else, and he understood what fraction he knew. "At this point, it's laugh or cry, and my face has been burnt enough for one day."

"I get it, Fae."

Suddenly I didn't want to be sitting. I stood rapidly and began to pace.

"We've got to get out of here," I said with renewed calm and urgency.

"I know," said Fiyero.

"No, it's more than that." He may not even wait until the baby's born, Yero, he's said he might- _God_- reach in and pull it _out_ of me-"   
-I let out a strangled cry in spite of myself-

"-and he wanted to make me – eat- it-"

I started crying again, and Yero put his arm around me.

Damn, this pregnancy thing was annoying sometimes.


	10. Dear Sarima

**A/N: I was on vacation, okay? So now that I'm back…here's the next installment. They may be coming less often, but that's because I've been trying to make them longer. So, with just a small bit of further ado…**

**Disclaimer: GM owns this- General Motors, of course, what did you think it stood for? No, I'm only kidding. Gregory Maguire owns this, and I am not him, therefore I do not own this. Savvy? (sorry. Pirates of the Caribbean. My sister _adores_ that movie, and she's very Glinda-esque, thus the italics). **

Fiyero and I began chipping away at the lock of the cell door with anything we could find. It was mostly small rocks, and the guards confiscated these whenever they caught us at it, and threatened to tie us up, though it was clear that they didn't really consider our endeavors any genuine threat to security. But even so, it was slow work.

Three months passed painstakingly in this way. We estimated me to be six or seven months along. We kept chipping at the damn lock, even knowing as we did how futile it was- even if we did manage to break it, it would be months before I could run.

My dress had long since ripped at the waist. Consequently, I wore Fiyero's shirt, and the remainder of the dress functioned nominally as a skirt. We slept in short patches, not for long stretches of time, and always woke each other, afraid of what might happen if one of us was taken while the other slept.

Fiyero wrote letters, or tried to. The floor was littered with them. Somehow the guards had learned about Sarima, and it amused them to no end, so they gave him paper.

_Dear Sarima: _

_You can have the castle. You can have Irji, Manek, and Nor, just let me- _

_Dear Sarima: _

_You know we never had a choice in who we married, but we should have a choice in with whom we fall in love, and I- _

_Dear Sarima: _

_You deserve your own love. Don't let me rob you of the chance to-_

_Dear Sarima: _

_I have been having an affair and I have to- _

_Dear Sarima: _

_I'm dead. _

_-Fiyero_

This was getting frustrating.

_Dear Sarima: _

_This is from Elphaba. You may have heard of me from Fiyero. You see, the thing is, Fiyero and I have…_

That's where he ripped the paper from my hand. Finally, he managed to write one that he was satisfied with.

_Dear Sarima: DO NOT SHOW THIS LETTER TO IRJI, MANEK, OR NOR! _

_To start off with, I'm all right. I've been imprisoned. It's a long story, but I'm going to tell it, or parts of it, anyway. _

_You remember Elphaba, from Shiz? The green girl from Munchkinland, Miss Nessarose's older sister, who disappeared sophister year? _

_Well, a short while ago, I found her and followed her until she told me what was going on. She worked for the Resistance. We fell in love. We had an affair- still are having one, in fact. I'm sorry, but I love her and I _chose_ her. You, too, should get to love someone of your choice. But on with the story. _

_One day, the Gale Force caught me in her home. They began beating me, and I nearly passed out. When she came in, they arrested her and dragged us to Southstairs. Turns out, by the way, she's also pregnant. So, I just thought you ought to know. _

_**Fiyero**_

The guards sent it off, or said they did.

Fiyero laughed like a maniac.

"Are you…all right?" I asked. I wasn't sure about this. I didn't like it. I didn't think I was anything close to worth it.

"Brilliant, Fae, brilliant!" he cried. I raised an eyebrow.

"I'm free!" he yelled. The eyebrow went higher. I inclined my head at the locked cell door.

"Well, emotionally."

"Emotionally, it would appear that you've been free for quite a while."

"Well, sort of."

I raised my eyebrow again, pretending offense. I was teasing, though. I knew what he meant.

He sighed. "You know what I meant."

See?

I had a sudden burst of déjà vu, though I knew I'd never lived this moment.

_Words are words, and what's said's said. _

My mother's voice.

Nanny said I had a full set of, as she put it, demon teeth, when I was born, and that she'd always thought I'd understood everything she and my parents said, even in infancy. Even _before? _

But I was not my mother.

I inclined my head again, towards him.

"Yes," I said, "I do."


	11. Oh, Dear

**A/N: I'm updating, Veronika Green, so you can't hit me with a wicker chair! Bwahahaha! Ha! Ha- okay. **

**Disclaimer: C'est a Gregory Maguire, pas a moi. **

Slowly, painfully, another month and a half passed. I was beginning to feel like a stranger in my own body, which was _very_ big. My broken arm had healed after a few months of being tied in one of my scarves, a makeshift sling, which I was finally able to discard. Fiyero laid his hand on my stomach.

"I can feel it kick," he said. I regarded him with my eyebrow-raised-look, which he had termed the Miss Elphaba Freeze.

"You've never felt that before, Mr. I-Know-Everything-About-Babies?"

He looked abashed. "Well…"

"What?" I asked.

"Truthfully, I haven't. I made it my business to be away from home most of the time Sarima was pregnant. It made me uneasy. My children do, too, for that matter. I'm always afraid I'll do something wrong and traumatize them for life," he admitted.

"Children, in my opinion, are much stronger than we give them credit for, or can be, if they need to. I always was. They may change themselves around every week to get some new kind of admiration, but if they're tested, they'll adapt as easily. Most people will," I said.

"Your childhood, Fae, was by no means the typical-" he stopped talking as we heard the door creak and both turned toward it at once. A guard stood there. He cleared his throat.

"I have orders to take you both to the Wizard."

"Why?" I asked. "I'm due in about ten minutes, I certainly hope he doesn't think he's going to torture me, because if so, he's got another think coming. I tolerated it before, but there's no way he's going to be allowed to do it again."

"You don't decide what the Wizard is or isn't allowed to do," said the guard.

"When it concerns me, Fiyero, or our child, I certainly intend to," I answered. "And have you forgotten? I'm a witch, remember? Woo-oo," I went on, waving my hands creepily. Fiyero chuckled under his breath.

"Elephant skulls and rose petals, banish thee to the-"

"All right, all right! Just don't! Come on, then, wouldn't want to make me hurt loverboy there, would you?"

"Just you try it," I said, "You'll be sorry you were ever born." I decided that that was enough bluffing for the moment, however, and nodded to Fiyero. He stood and then helped me to my feet with some effort.

"All right then, let's go, if we must, how about _today_?" I said impatiently. The guard shackled one of my wrists to one of Fiyero's and tied a rope to the middle of the short chain connecting us, so that he could pull us along. I felt Fiyero's arm behind me, supporting me. He must have sensed how much my lower back hurt.

We made our way through the prison's maze of corridors, becoming ever more familiar to me. When we reached the doors leading to the Wizard's office at last, I spat on them. This guard, less afraid of me than the previous one, slapped me. Fiyero growled at him. The guard merely smirked and threw open the double doors, then shoved us inside.

We fell to our knees from the force of his shove.

"Ah, so nice of you to bow. It's good to see you finally showing some respect, and learning your place, Miss Elphaba," said the Wizard. The asshole. My father, damn it all. I spat at him, too. Fiyero helped me stand again.

"I don't believe in 'places,'" I said. "You're no better than anyone else, and a lot worse than most."

He slapped me, and I reeled back.

"Damn," I said, rubbing my jaw. "I'm getting tired of that." I glared at the Wizard. I still couldn't think of him as 'Father,' and doubted that I ever would.

"So, Miss Elphaba, you are still not prepared to submit to my authority?"

"Damn straight," I replied. "And I never will be, but thanks for asking." He howled at me, like a wolf. It was…perturbing. Fiyero looked frightened.

"You know," I said, "It might be better for the country if it wasn't ruled by a total psychopath."

The Wizard got extremely angry at this remark. He grabbed my left arm, and, with surprising strength, wrenched it out of its socket. I shrieked in pain. Fiyero looked ready to bite the Wizard.

"Bastard," I muttered. The Wizard liked this even less. He grabbed me by the hair again, and forced me to my knees, as he had done before. Since we were still chained together, Fiyero, too, got yanked haphazardly forward and floorward. The Wizard kicked Fiyero, hard, and probably broke one of his ribs. Fiyero's face twisted and he cried out.

"Stop it!" I screamed, aware that Fiyero was being punished this way because I couldn't be, without the Wizard's trump card (my baby) disappearing from his hand. "He hasn't done anything wrong!" I'd said that before, too.

"You haven't done anything wrong, either," gasped Fiyero. "Have you?"

"I haven't killed anyone, if that's what you mean," I replied. _Though not for lack of trying_. Fiyero caught the thought and half-smiled through his pain.

"Very nice," said the Wizard, smirking.

"He needs medical treatment, and he'd better get it," I said firmly.

"You're hardly in a position to be making demands, Miss Elphaba."

"I don't care. I'll do so anyway. Get him medical help, _now_." The Wizard hit me again, harder than before, and as he did he raked his nails across my face. I cried out in pain. Blood rolled down my cheek. Something equally wet soaked my legs. I looked down. _Oh shit. _

"You're going to regret that," I told the Wizard through the pain that suddenly seized me, then ebbed.

"Why?" he asked.

"My water just broke, all over your fancy Gillikinese tapestry rug," I said, smiling. Fiyero rasped something that sounded like a laugh.

"All right, _Wizard_¸ you've just seriously pissed off a pregnant witch," I informed him. "Now, either you get us _both_ medical attention,_ now_, or you deliver this baby yourself and I strangle you with this chain once you're done," I said with my sweetest smile. Despite himself, the Wizard looked slightly terrified of the process of birth beginning before his eyes.

_Men. Honestly._

He picked up a small silver handbell from his desk and began ringing it loudly. Several guards burst through the double doors.

"What is it, sir?" they asked.

"Um," he swallowed hard. "Bring these prisoners to the palace infirmary." The guards looked puzzled and didn't move. "Now!" barked the Wizard.


	12. Surprise

**A/N: Oh, there's big doings afoot. A big surprise. Anyway, you all had BETTER review! Or…I'll…I'll…borrow Veronika Green's wicker chair and hit you with it! There! Extra cookies to whoever finds the hidden, extra, Wizard of Oz book reference! **

**Disclaimer: It isn't mine, so stop rubbing it in, will you? Just kidding. **

The Wizard was no less an asshole because I'd coerced him into getting us help. He had the guards knock me out with a club, and maybe Fiyero too, but I didn't know, and when I awoke, my arm was still dislocated.

I opened my eyes slowly. "Is it over?" I asked anyone who happened to be in the room. Suddenly, Fiyero's face came into focus above mine, and at the same time, pain overwhelmed me.

I grimaced. "Guess not," I moaned.

"Push, Elphie, push," Fiyero urged me. What did he take me for, an idiot? I was struck by the urge to push _him_, but he was to my left and that arm was out of commission, and I was far too tired to reach over and try to push him with my right.

"I would push _you_," I informed him, "but I'm too tired."

"Push the baby!" he yelled.

"I _am_!" I yelled back.

Suddenly, I became aware of the presence of a nurse at the foot of the bed when something slipped out of me, along with a great rush of pain, and she shrieked with joy.

"It's a girl!" she said.

But the pain wasn't going away.

"Um," I said, "Am I still supposed to be having contractions?"

The nurse looked between my legs, pushed on my thighs to see.

"Please don't touch me," I said. She ignored me.

"You're having twins!" she announced.

"Does that mean I have to do this _again_?" I cried. She and Fiyero nodded. "Someone please hit me with something very hard now," I begged. No one obliged. A sudden, sharper pain ripped through me again and I yelled out a curse in Qua'ati, which didn't actually make much sense. I writhed on the bed. The pain seemed to lessen for a moment, and I noted it was nice to be in a bed again. Then, the pain returned with a vengeance and I screamed. Dark pain, pure pain, oh, why couldn't I pass out? Reading my mind again- no small feat in its bloody incoherent state- Fiyero leaned down and whispered,

"You have to stay awake, Fae-Fae, because we'll have to run."

That prospect was far from appealing, but I was being ripped open and yanked apart from the inside, like my nightmare and I couldn't even begin to process thoughts of any time other than Now and the pain I was in.

"Push, Fae-Fae, you can do it!" said Fiyero. He was irking me quite a bit at that moment.

"Please shut up," I gasped. I felt my body heave and something give and the pain begin to ebb to a slow, dull, steady beat. I pulled in great gasps of air for a few moments.

"This one's a boy," said the nurse, cleaning him off. "That's odd," she added. "_Both _of them had a caul over their faces. Supposed to mean they got second sight, an' all." I heard her mutter under her breath, "but wi' _that_ fer a mother, I ain't surprised," as she handed the boy to Fiyero and the girl to me, and bustled out of the room. Apparently, she hadn't been warned that we were huge flight risks. I was awkwardly holding my daughter with one arm, and I was terrified that I was going to drop her. "Fiyero," I said, "help!" He laid our son on the bed and put our daughter beside him. He gently took my arm in both hands.

"Are you sure you know how to do this?" I asked.

"Yes. In the Vinkus, you know, there aren't any real doctors, and even if there were, in the winter we can hardly leave to go and get one," he replied. "You learn what to do about things like this." He pushed on my arm and shoved it back into its socket. I whimpered a bit in pain; it hurt worse than it had when the Wizard had dislocated it in the first place. Fiyero poked through several drawers until he found some cloth, which he did up into a sling. He put the baby girl back into my arms, which I could at least form into a secure position now, and took the boy, and I looked at my daughter for the first time, unsure of what to expect.

"Oh," I breathed, awed in spite of myself. She was green, yes, but a much lighter green than I was, a beautiful pale color, luminescent and hazy, the very aura of springtime. Her features were delicate, if only by virtue of their tinyness. Her small nose was pointed slightly, gracefully. Her tiny mouth was pink and closed. I realized she hadn't screamed at birth and checked her breathing, holding my own breath as I did so. She was fine. Her soft, slight fuzz of hair was as inky black as my own, her eyelashes coal dust. But when she fluttered them and opened her eyes, squinting against the unfamiliar world, her eyes were blue, and less of a newborn blue than they were Fiyero's azure color, lovely and filled with almost preternatural understanding.

"Fala," I murmured. She seemed to like it, her small hand unfurled and reached up as if to take hold of the name, to snatch the very word from the air and make it her own.

"Fala?" asked Fiyero. "It's lovely, Elphie-Fae. What does it mean?"

"Crow," I said. "Misunderstood. Strangely beautiful. Not alone."

"You," said Fiyero, "could draw meaning from a stone."

"Solid," I replied. "stubborn, immoveable. Stuck, you might say-"

"All right, all right," he said, laughing. "Now let me see Fala, and you meet your son."

I brushed an airy kiss against my daughter's forehead, a blessing, almost. At this slip, I merely sighed and took my son from Fiyero.

He wasn't green, or ochre. Like Shell, like Nessarose, he was simply pale peach, his face pinkish red with the effort of being born.

"Hello," I murmured, brushing his stomach gently with my finger. At the touch, his eyes opened. The baby blue seemed already to be fading, or just to be covering something else. I could glimpse my own dark eyes peering out from behind the thin façade of blue. His fuzzy hair was deep mahogany brown, a few shades darker than Fiyero's hair, but about the same color as his skin. His nose was less pointed than Fala's, his lips equally as pink and lovely, though he was crying.

"Ssh, ssh," I muttered gently. I intended to imitate the sounds of wind in the rushes of Quadling Country- _tiir, tiir_­- but it came out "Liir," instead.

"Liir?" asked Fiyero. "Is that a name?"

"It is if we want it to be," I said, grinning.

"Liir," he said, trying it out, "I like it."

"Me too."

"Fala and Liir," said Fiyero, "welcome to the world."


	13. Family Reunion

**A/N: Whee, another update! No one wants the extra cookies? All right, I'll tell you, then. When she kisses Fala's forehead, it's like how Glinda kissed Dorothy's and left her 'special mark,' or whatever, on her forehead. (which was probably just her excess lipstick, in my opinion, but whatever). **

**Disclaimer: It's not mine, it's General Motors'! Hahahahaha. **

"We have to get out of here," said Fiyero.

"Is five minutes to _breathe_ after having twins really too much to ask?" I demanded. Fiyero grinned. "Okay, you rest there, I'll try to figure out some sort of carriers for the babies with this cloth," he said.

"Wow. Look, children, Daddy's a cloth wizard!"

"Elphaba! Don't swear in front of the babies!"

We both cracked up at that, and then relaxed. It felt very, very nice to laugh again.

Fiyero handed me a thick wad of cloth.

"What's this for?" I asked.

"Bleeding- there is bleeding, right?"

"No, Fiyero, there's blue paint. Of course there's bleeding!" I said, rolling my eyes. "I knew that, and the last time I saw a baby born was I was eight years old and wasn't supposed to be there in the first place!"

"Just do whatever it is you're going to do with the damn cloth!"

"Fine," I said, and did.

Fiyero cut and yanked and tied until he had two small half-sacks with leg holes in them. I placed Fala in one carefully, but it fell apart. Fortunately, I was still holding her.

"We should just carry them," I suggested to Fiyero, who was having no more luck with Liir's carrier.

"Good idea," he said, and started to add something else, but before he could, we heard boots from one side of the curtain drawn around the bed and surrounding area.

"And we should probably do it now," I added. Fiyero set Liir down for a moment and helped me out of bed.

The room spun for a minute. I wobbled on my feet and felt as if I were going to retch, or faint, or something. _Be strong, Elphaba. You can do this, you've got better brains. Do it for Fala and Liir. _

Apparently, my thought-voice was friends with Glinda or something.

Determinedly, I stopped wobbling. I scooped up Fala- Fiyero had Liir- and we pushed our way out of the other side of the curtain-

-and into a ring of Gale Forcers.

"Shit," I breathed out.

"Back away now," Fiyero told them all calmly. "You don't want to do this." As he spoke, he looked at me and jerked his head back at the curtain. I nodded.

"Oh, I think we do," said one of the guards. Step back, back, back.

"No," said Fiyero, "you really don't, because-" and then we dashed behind the curtain again.

"We're probably surrounded," I said.

"Or maybe all the Gale Forcers over there just ran to the other side, thinking to head us off," replied Fiyero. Cautiously, I peeked through the curtain.

"They're still there," I called. Fiyero looked through the other side.

"And there," he added grimly.

"All right," I said slowly, a plan percolating in my head. "So, we surrender," I went on. Fiyero stared at me. "Elphaba-" he said. I held up a hand.

"We surrender," I repeated. "We have them bring us to the Wizard. We threaten to kill him-"

"With what?" interrupted Fiyero. I pulled open a drawer and rifled through it until I found a scalpel. I wrapped its head in gauze and tucked it into my bra, because _no one _was searching me there. _Ever. _

"All right," said Fiyero. "Good plan so far. Then what?"

"We threaten to kill him unless he lets us leave. Oh, don't forget, we'll need to bar the doors and take his little handbell first."

"Bar the doors with what?" asked Fiyero. I closed my eyes and visualized the layout of the Wizard's chambers.

"There's two things," I said. "There's a wide-backed chair in the right hand back corner that might do it, and an ornate, thick, Shizian coatrack about three feet to the left of the doors."

Fiyero looked impressed. "Good memory," he said.

"Good _training_," I corrected. "Speaking of which, why haven't those elite Gale Forcers burst in here, weapons drawn, yet?"

"They probably think you're breastfeeding," said Fiyero, "which-"

"I will do when we're holding the Wizard hostage," I said. "Ought to freak him out, too, which is always a plus."

"All right then, let's go" said Fiyero. We threw open the curtains. The Gale Forcers all stared at us.

"Gentlemen," I said, "well, nominal gentlemen, anyway- we will surrender, on one condition."

"What do you want, witch?" asked the leader.

"Among other things, a new father, my liberty, and for you not to refer to me in that manner," I said, "but my condition is that you take us to the Wizard. Now."

The guards exchanged glances and a few smirked.

"Done," said the leader, "considering that that's what our orders are, anyhow."

"Damn," I said, "I could've wrangled a pony out of this instead."

Fiyero snorted. The guards ignored my hilarity and took hold of each of us by an arm. I tried to arrange Fala more securely in my injured arm, but it was not working.

"If you make me drop my baby," I informed the guard holding my arm, "I will kill you, very slowly and very painfully, with a simple spell that will eat you from the inside out."

He dropped my arm. "Thank you," I said sweetly, quickly supporting Fala's head. Since Fiyero's arm wasn't broken, he was doing all right with Liir.

The walk from the infirmary was shorter, not to mention a sight dryer and more pleasant, than the trek from our Southstairs cell. When we arrived at the Wizard's chambers, he was waiting, an evil smile on his lips.

"So kind of you to let me see my grandchildren," he said once the guards had exited and shut the doors behind them. I shuddered in revulsion.

"Don't even think about touching them," I said.

"I won't- yet," said the Wizard. He settled back in his chair. "So-"

"Fiyero, now," I muttered as the Wizard said something inane. While the Wizard had been occupied in talking to me, Fiyero had slowly bent over, so that now it was a simple matter to lay Liir on the Gillikinese tapestry rug. He grabbed the coatrack as I laid Fala down and strode over to the Wizard's desk, snatching the bell just as the Wizard reached for it. I pulled out the scalpel and he paled.

"You wouldn't kill your-" he began.

"Oh, yes, I would," I replied. "Aside from the fact than _any_ family obligation whatsoever died when you threatened my children and was buried when you kicked Fiyero, you brought me into this miserable existence. And as if that wasn't enough, just when it finally seemed less miserable, you tried to take me out of it!" I stopped to breathe for a moment. "And that's without taking into account all the other things you've done, to the Animals, to any dissenter, to-"

"Fae," said Fiyero quietly, to stop me, and I realized I was shaking violently.

"What do you _want_?" asked the Wizard.

"I want to be safely out of prison, and I want you to swear you'll never come after us or my children," I said, and waited for his answer.


	14. Over the River and Through the Woods

**A/N: Sorry, it's been awhile. But I think some people reading this also owe me updates…grr. **

**Disclaimer: It belongs to GM, not General Motors (although I wouldn't be surprised: whatever Wal-Mart, Disney, and McDonald's don't own, it probably does.)**

"Yes," said the Wizard. "I will, all right? Just get that thing away from me. You're shaking. It'll slip."

I didn't move. I couldn't. I wanted to kill him, and I didn't. Well, I did, but I didn't, somehow, want that to be the first event Fala and Liir witnessed, even if they couldn't remember it. I didn't want it tainting their childhoods, I didn't want one of them, one day, owed or owing a life in some kind of abstract eternal checking account or something. All of which resulted, as sometimes happened, in my heart overriding my brain, and the crazy thoughts that resulted crashing together and, while not neutralizing each other, neutralizing my capability to _decide _and then to _move_, neither of which I could do at the moment.

"Fae," said Fiyero, "come on." He put down Liir, whom he had picked up, and walked over to me. "Fae?" he asked, putting his hand on my shoulder, shaking it a little. My tongue wasn't working either; I was totally frozen.

"_Elphaba!_" yelled Fiyero, panicking now. "Elphaba, where are you, what's the matter, please answer me!" I dropped the scalpel, thank goodness it didn't hit anyone.

_Don't thank goodness. What does goodness have to do with the scalpel you just used to threaten your own father, who has nothing good about him either? _

_Hey, inner voice? _

_Yes? _

_Shut up. You're giving me a headache. _

My inner voice obliged for the moment, and I came back to myself. I blinked. I breathed. Fiyero shook my shoulder again. "Elphaba!"

"I'm here, I'm back, I'm all right."

"That's all very nice," said the Wizard, "but would you mind getting that sharp object out of my face?" I stared at him, rage running hot and cold through me. I reached out my hand slowly, to kill him, to finally do it, to finally _succeed _at something- but a thought hit me just as Fiyero grabbed my hand and yanked it back- _What about the guards, they'll know, we'll be trapped, they could get the twins_-

And I knew it was his thought, too, for he said, quietly,

"It's not worth it, Elphaba. Later. Now, we've just got to get out of here- get the _twins _out of here- safely, all right?"

I nodded, almost imperceptibly. I gave Fiyero the scalpel. I didn't trust myself not to do something rash.

"Now," said Fiyero to the Wizard, flamboyantly putting the scalpel in his pocket, "about that safe passage?"

"This cannot be safe," I said. For hours now, we'd been walking east, and days more lay ahead.

"What do you mean?" asked Fiyero.

"One, I just had twins and I highly, highly doubt walking hundreds of miles to see my _family _is on the list of healthy activities for new mothers," I said. "And, two, this forest isn't a very good place for babies. We can't run with them. They're cold, they might have something wrong with them and we'd never be able to do anything until it was too late, and they're hungry and what if tigers or something smell my blood and come after us and get them, or-" I was reaching hysteria, quickly.

"Elphie, Elphie!" yelled Fiyero. "Calm down! There's no tigers in this forest. You told me that. The babies are all wrapped up, it's Summersend for Lurlina's sake Elphie, it's not cold. We're fine, all right? It's all going to be fine."

Desolate and with no idea of where to go for the night- we were miles from any inns or towns, not having exactly planned this trip too well- we spent the night in the forest. With the twins asleep ad the night alone, calm and quiet…well, we changed _that_.

Heh heh.

The next day, we kept walking, dead east now, no longer listing towards the south. Nessa and my father- no- _Frex_, might be angry, but their combined religious mania-_ although not _all _of it looks so manic now_- turned into fury was no match for the winter that would have been in full force by the time we walked to Kiamo Ko in the Vinkus, our other option. Fiyero might have survived, but the babies would freeze for sure and I would bleed out before we got anywhere safe, which, as a matter of fact, I realized, I might still.

We walked blankly east. I felt myself fading as we went, my blood thinning, so tired-

_no, _I thought, my mind crying out in desperation, my face never flickering, _no. I don't want to die, no, not now, not that I finally have something. Love. Please, someone, if there's anyone listening up there, I can't believe I'm doing this, praying this- but- please. Save me. I don't want to be my mother. _

Somehow, I found myself pulling through, some hidden reserve of strength pouring through my veins and stringing me back up like a puppet.

We pushed on, the sun growing warmer on our skin, the ground growing less rocky, the forest receding. We left some hills behind, but the small ones of Rush Margins began to appear in the distance and the trees became fewer and spread out between farm fields. Something in me quickened at the sight of the smoky blue hills ahead; though that was not our destination, though I had not been here since I was three- I knew it. It was in me as surely as some place unnameable, some place _other_, that I saw sometimes in my dreams was.

A few days later and just one day's walk away from Colwen Grounds, I was as comfortable in reclaiming my territory as Fiyero was uncomfortable, losing his. The land's flatness (we could no longer see Rush Margins' hills), the strangeness to him of the cornfields and the barren sky, the heat pressing on our heads, but not the plain savanna heat of the Vinkus, an insinuating, wet humidity that crawled inside our very pores and made its home. It dragged at us, weighing us down and dulling us. We walked at the outermost edge of the forest lining the Yellow Brick Road. The forest was unmapped, a surprise to travelers. We were between it and the farmland, however. But I _knew _the forest. I had never seen most of it, but I knew it. I knew that there were no wild beasts lurking here as they did in the west, despite the pervading legends. _Lions and tigers and bears, oh _my!I scoffed mentally, a deep-buried memory trying in vain to surface as I did so.

_Shut up and go back to sleep, _I told it; _I don't want to think about you right now_. -beneath lies an avalanche of hurt- _My mind is on more important matters- _

"Elphaba," Fiyero interrupted my thoughts. The heat had made our conversation listless, our thoughts lusterless when spoken into the sodden air, so we had walked in comfortable silence for most of the day. "It's getting dark. Are we sleeping in the forest again, or is there somewhere we can stay?"

Sleeping in a clean warm bed with Fala and Liir undeniably safe beside me was quite an appealing prospect. Not to mention, of course…

I racked my brains, town names familiar only from geography lessons appearing before my closed eyes.

"I think," I said slowly, emerging from a fog, "if we go on the main road- no, shit, we've already passed Old Pastoria- but some miles back of here and further east, is Wend Hardings- there's an inn at Three Dead Trees, I remember."

"How far is it?"

"Six, seven miles from here, but it'll be that many _back_, too. From here, it's about ten miles from Colwen Grounds and we can make that tomorrow. We go back, it's sixteen and we're here tomorrow night again. Today or tomorrow, we'll be sleeping in the woods, and tomorrow adds an extra half-day before we get there."

"All right. So we sleep here tonight, we get there tomorrow?"

"Yes. It's safe, you know. There are no wild animals here any larger than a gopher."

–except- _No. _

We made beds out of hay and grass we found littering the farmlands, and we slept deeper in the forest, out of sight from the farms and the road. It was safe and soft and peaceful, just the little broken faction of a family that we were, together.

Rejoined with the whole, it would be much worse.


	15. Didn't See That Coming

**A/N: Here comes the next family reunion! Woot-woot! Apparently the computer or something cut off my paragraph dividers. Sorry. I'll use my old standby. Boring, but what're you gonna do? –shrugs philosophically-. Anyways. **

**Disclaimer: It's not mine, and that's succinctness for you. **

It was just after dark the next day when we arrived at the gates of Colwen Grounds. The guards looked at us like we were vermin as we approached them.

"Get ye gone, before we do it for you," said one. I had had quite enough of idiot men elevated to a position of authority by virtue of their brutishness trying to tell me what to do in the past nine months, thanks very much.

"I," I said, standing straighter, positioning my expression into one of haughty entitlement- I'd learnt it from Glinda on her first day at Shiz, when she demanded a room- "I am Elphaba, the Thropp Third Descending, sister to Miss Nessarose, daughter-" I choked a bit on the word, but doubted any of them noticed- "of Frexspar the Godly, great-granddaughter of the Eminence himself." I paused, glaring down my nose at them. "Surely you are not so far from my family's confidences so as not to know of my skin color?"

They shuddered a bit, hearing me mention it.

"And this," I went on, "is Fiyero, Prince of the Arjikis Tribe of the Vinkus. Surely he bears admitting to see His Eminence? And Fala and Liir, the Thropp Fourth Descending and the third in line for the throne of the Arjikis, respectively."

Fiyero looked at me, impressed. "I had no idea you were so good at remembering the particulars of nomenclature," he murmured. I grimaced.

"Unfortunately," I murmured back, "In her drug-induced delirium, my mother was rather fond of reminding us all what she and we had been born to and how she had been dragged down for the sake of my father and his 'God-forsaken holy missions,' a phrase which always caused her to burst into high, frightening peals of laughter, which in turn made Nessie cry, so I had to half-carry her outside and calm her down somehow."

"Ah," said Fiyero, making an expression with his face I couldn't quite read. "At least your mother deigned to talk to you."

"Only to drunkenly reminisce- and she usually didn't know she was talking to me- and my father, only to lecture, assign tasks, and use me as an object lesson."

"I see."

"Ahem," said the guard.

"Go _get _Frex then, if you don't the hell believe me," I snapped at him. "And be quick about it, my children are cold and hungry and if they suffer any more due to your ignorance I shall have my great-grandfather-"

"Fabala?"

Frex appeared behind the guards and the gate.

"Papa," I said, the childish endearment, not even valid, issued from my mouth before I could stop it.

"Let her- oh, them- in, would you please?" Frex asked the guards. Glaring at me, they obeyed. I smirked at them.

"See you later, boys," I said, laughing lightly, and Fiyero, Fala, Liir, and I entered my mother's home.

Before he would let me explain anything, even Fiyero, even Fala and Liir, Frex insisted that we clean up and change into the clothes he'd have laid out for us- for which I was profoundly thankful.

"Fabala, there's a bottle of oil in the bathroom down the hall," he informed me. I smiled. I was hoping to test my newfound tolerance of water- now that it had touched me, all over, would it still hurt? How much, and for how long?

"Oh, that's all right, Father," I said. "I'll use the water." I left him with a look of mild bemusement on his face.

Fala and Liir, now, were to be washed with water for the first time in their young lives; the midwife had merely toweled them off. Fiyero had filled the bathtub with warm water, and the babies lay unclothed on several soft towels before me.

I took a deep breath.

"All right," I said, "let's do this all at once."

I took a washcloth, dipped it in the water, submerging my arm at the same time. I waited, expectantly, for the sharp jab of pain, but none came. I smiled. "Okay," I say. "First hurdle jumped."

"Fae," said Fiyero, "Are you sure, about washing the babies? I mean-"

"If it doesn't hurt you, and it doesn't hurt me, what in Oz makes you think it'd hurt them?" I asked.

"Good point."

I took the wet washcloth and rubbed it on Fala's emerald stomach. She cooed in happiness.

"See?" I said to Fiyero. "Your father is a worrier," I told Fala.

"Coming from someone worried about everyone but herself, that's pretty damn rich," said Fiyero. I washed Fala's little arms.

"I am not," I said. He gave me a look. "I'm not worried much about the Wizard, am I?"

"You are. You're worried he won't die quick enough without assistance," pointed out Fiyero. "Worry for someone can be negative, too."

"Good point."

"We seem to like that phrase tonight."

"Seem to." I handed him another washcloth. "You finish Fala, I'm going to do Liir."

I wet the cloth in the water again and began to wash Liir's legs with it. He stared at me solemnly for a moment, then made a gurgling noise, but a happy one.

"See? They're _both _perfectly fine with it," I told Fiyero.

"Yeah, yeah, you're right, I get it." Fiyero glanced at me and noted something in my face. Weariness, maybe. "I'll finish the babies, you go and wash in the other bathroom," he offered. "You must be all bloody and stuff."

"Thank you," I said, for once taking what was given me without arguing.

The hot water was heaven. That may have been the strangest sentence I'll ever think, but it was true. I sank back in the bathtub and closed my eyes. I ducked my head below the water and listened to my own heart beat slowly, since I was holding my breath. I burst through the surface triumphantly, grabbing air and shattering the tranquility of the water.

When I had finished, I wrapped myself in a robe and hurried back to the room where Frex had said my clothes would be. The moment I saw the dress I was to wear, I groaned. It was one of Nessarose's old gowns, and it was _green_. Not the same shade as I was, either. I looked at the ruins of my old black dress in my hand and sighed. I had no choice.

I slipped the silly silk thing over my head and twisted my damp hair up off of my neck, securing it with one of the pins in the dresser drawers of the room. There was no mirror, so my hair probably looked ridiculous, but who cared?

And as for the dress, who knew? Maybe the lack of contrast made me look less green. But I doubted it.

So attired, I drifted out into the hall and wandered down it, haphazardly opening doors until I found Fiyero and the twins. Fiyero was dressed in clothes I recognized from my girlhood; they were Frex's. The twins wore cloth diapers and new blankets; Liir was snoring almost inaudibly and Fala, too, seemed asleep.

"You are wearing clothes I recognize from when I was twelve," I informed Fiyero, "and it is severely disconcerting."

He ignored my comment.

"Are you going to tell Frex?" he asked.

"About what? Us? The twins? Yes," I answered. "Of course."

"No, not that."

"What, then?"

"That he's not your father."

"I don't know, Fiyero," I paused to consider it. "Not today."

"Why not?"

"My having- you know- had any sort of relationship, and having two children, is enough shock for one day, don't you think?" I asked.

"I suppose." Fiyero looked thoughtful. "You said your father's religious?"

"Yes, he is- was- is? I don't know- a priest," I said.

"Well, mightn't he take against- you know- adultery and all that?" he asked.

"I don't know. I suppose he might, although I doubt anything 'bad' I do would surprise him all that much," I answered. "Well, actually, this might, but not because it's 'bad,' because I doubt he ever thought anyone would-"

Fiyero knew what I was going to say and he didn't like it. "Fae," he said, a pained expression on his face, "please."

"Why do you care, anyway?" I asked him.

"Well," said Fiyero, "I was thinking he could maybe- oh, I don't know- marry us?"


	16. A House is Not A Home

**A/N: You guys are _so _lucky my friends aren't home and my parents won't take me anywhere and I can't drive, cause my boredom another chapter for you! Oh, plus the beginning is Frex's POV.**

**Disclaimer: It's not mine, and neither is fun. The only thing I've got…is _ennui_. **

_When I heard the voice, I knew it was her. Standing outside the gate, so gaunt and sallow it was difficult to tell she was green, although the guards appeared to have noticed- maybe it only applied if you'd known her a long time, had grown used to seeing her green form appear around a corner, pointed nose buried in a book. _

_In my eyes, she is the baby we wouldn't touch, the child we began to love and then ignored again when Nessarose was born, the young girl, thick-skinned and serious, the increasingly idealistic teenager, always ignored, even by herself, in favor of her sister. Hindsight, you know, is perfect. _

_But Nessarose needed our love, mine and Melena's; Elphaba was always so wild and independent that she seemed to need less. She was so…self-contained. Approval and disapproval, love and hatred, meant nothing to her, on the surface. _

_Her connection with things was strange. I tell people holding Nessarose calmed her wildness, and it did, but there was more to the story than that. _

_She was wailing, an unearthly sound, and had been for quite a long time, all throughout Nessarose's birth, and only later did we realize why. In all the movement and noise and chaos of that night, it wasn't until it was too late that we realized Turtle Heart was missing. But Elphaba knew; she knew that and she knew his fate, but she wasn't articulate enough to tell us- and in all fairness, we'd not have listened- so she screamed. _

_But when she held Nessarose, she stopped screaming abruptly. _

_And it was at _that _moment that well water began to resurface. _

_Now, even in her rags and sickly state, even green as she is, (green is a funny word. It's a color of freedom, of life bursting forth, but the word sounds as though you are grasping something, gripping it tightly in your fist), she is proud and strong and beautiful, in her way, all things I never was. _

_My daughter. _

…

"Marry?" I asked in disbelief. "But- what about Sarima?"

'As long as she hasn't contacted me to protest, and she hasn't, we're divorced," said Fiyero.

"I don't think- I mean, we don't even know if she got the letter."

"Then when we go to the Vinkus to settle things, we present it to her as a _fait accompli _and see what happens," said Fiyero philosophically.

I gave him a look.

"Elphaba," he said, "I really don't care what she thinks. I love _you_. You've got to realize, though, that Sarima's and my marriage isn't marriage as you understand it. We didn't even took vows, ever, not even when we got older. So far as I know, there wasn't even any sort of ceremony by proxy. It wasn't sacred vows between two people, it was a business arrangement between our parents. It means absolutely nothing to me. Except Irji, Manek, and Nor." He looked at me intensely. "I want a real marriage, with someone I love with all my heart- and _soul_. With you."

I felt my heart melt like warm butter in my chest, and a small warm tear form in my eye.

"I believe a 'yes' or a 'no' is required now," said Fiyero, smiling.

"Well, yes, if you- if you put it like that," I said, unable to think of anything wittier.

Fiyero kissed me for a very long time.

"I think," I whispered after a sweet eternity, warding off Fiyero's insistent kisses on my neck. "-No, stop- I think we really have to go talk to my fa- _Frex- _ and Nessarose downstairs now."

"Do it tomorrow," begged Fiyero, "please?"

"No- Yero, stop, I mean it- he might come in here if we don't go down there soon!" Fiyero sobered and stood up- but he lifted me off of the bed as he did so.

"Damn you, Fiyero! Put me down!"

"You wanted us to go downstairs, didn't you?"

"What about the babies?"

"Good point."

I made him let me down and picked up Fala, who wore an expression that, if I didn't know better, I'd have taken for a smile.

Just as we were about to leave, a knock came on the door. I twisted my right hand below Fala's back and opened it. A maid stood in the hall.

"Master Frex has told me I'm to watch the babies until you're done speaking," she said. "I'm Linseed." Fiyero handed Liir to her, and she placed him in one of the cribs in the room and looked at me expectantly. I stayed where I was.

"Fae," Fiyero murmured gently, "it's all right, you can let go."

I handed her Fala, and as Fiyero led me downstairs I kept looking over my shoulder.

I guess I was better at this mothering thing than I thought.

…

My great-grandfather wasn't there, which surprised me. Of all the people in my family, he hadn't seemed to mind me. In fact, whenever we'd visited Colwen Grounds, he'd actually seemed to like me.

Back then, as soon as I could, I'd escape the house (for once there were plenty of others to care for Nessarose) and run wild through the spacious grounds in the frilly frock that my great grandfather had laid out for me (and a matching one for Nessie).

"Elphaba…she likes nature," Frex would say. From him, it had seemed an apology. But when Great Grandfather had repeated it, it seemed more like a compliment. He taught me the names of herbs and other plants, of birds and other creatures.

He'd called me his little dryad- a tree nymph, green as grass, and I _was _always in trees back then-

But here and now, in the sitting room, it was only Frex, more used to me now and colder, and Nessarose, a bitter glare upon her face, regal in black silk, a color austere against her pale skin, far fairer than I remembered. No; 'fair' wasn't the world. White, sickly, strange.

I stood in the doorway, Fiyero behind me. I was fixed by my family's glares. We were, the three of us, as if held by a spell, for a long moment, before Fiyero broke it.

"Well, good evening, Reverend Frexspar, sir, Miss Nessarose," said Fiyero, gallantly. I twitched. Was it natural to feel this uncomfortable in what, I guessed, was my own house?

"Elphaba," said Frex, "I believe you owe us an explanation."

"Where did you go? How could you leave me like that?" demanded Nessarose.

"Nessa, I had to," I explained. "Once I knew what the Wizard was doing, that it was really him doing it and that he wasn't going to stop it, I couldn't be expected to simply sit back and-"

"Let's not speak of politics," Frex threw in hurriedly.

"But to never write! Why couldn't you have at least-"

"Nessa, you think the Gale Force is above torturing the friends and family of their enemies?" I cried. "I can assure you, they are _not_. They'd kill _infants_." I paused. "I loved you too much to contact you."

"But, Elphaba," said Frex, "what we- at least I- really want to know is, who is _this_? Who are the babies? What _have _you been _doing_?"

"I am Fiyero, Prince of the Arjikis," said Fiyero, "And, with your blessing, sir, I'd like to marry Elphaba."

Nessarose's jaw dropped about a foot, and I thought Frex might have a heart attack.

"But-but- _why_?" asked Nessarose.

"Because I love her," said Fiyero, "and she's absolutely beautiful."

I didn't know what color my face had turned, but it must have been extraordinarily embarrassing.

"Well, that's wonderful," said Frex, "_Unbelievably _so, in fact. But- who're the babies?"

"And whose," added Nessarose, meanly.

"Fala Linden, the Thropp Fourth Descending, and Liir Dillamond, third in line for the Arjiki throne."

Stares.

"They're twins," I added.

"So…they're…yours?" asked Nessarose, laughing insanely.

"And yours?" Frex asked Fiyero, rather darkly.

We looked at each other.

"Yes," we said. Frex turned purple. I bluffed.

"Turtle Heart," I said nonchalantly.

"What!" asked Frex.

"Nothing, nothing," I said, glad it had worked.

Frex let it go.


	17. Three Screaming Matches

**A/N: The delay is so not my fault this time!**

**Disclaimer: Enim, ti si ton. **

Living with my (nominal, but Frex didn't know that) family was disorienting.

Nessarose was, at the moment, barely speaking to me, except to order me around (orders which, for the most part, I blithely ignored) and to mutter snide remarks at me, or at Fiyero, who was rather scared of her.

"It's a good thing she hasn't any arms," he said once, "She might kill us all in our sleep if she did."

I gave him a look, and he shut up. The look was a reflex, really; as I'd told Boq, if one thing gives me nerve it's people making life harder for Nessarose. But, I reflected, Fiyero was probably right.

It was the day before we were to get married, though, that things got interesting.

I woke up early, as usual. The babies were unusually quiet children, thankfully (for all of our sakes; as Fiyero once remarked, 'The only good Elphaba is a well-rested Elphaba, and even then…' I smacked him for it, too, but not hard). After I checked on the twins, I drifted down the hall, still in my white nightdress, intending to use the bathroom. Still half-asleep, I didn't notice Nessa in the hall chair until I was directly in front of her.

"Boo," she said, dryly.

"Nessa- what do you-?" I began.

"Before you get married, I thought we should talk," Nessa interrupted.

"Can we do this some other time- say, when I'm fully conscious?" I asked. "Dressed would be nice, too."

Nessarose ignored me. Sighing, I sat down in the chair beside hers.

"Marriage is a holy sacrament, Elphaba."

I groaned. "I should have seen this coming."

"You need to be prepared-"

"I _am _prepared-"

"Spiritually as well as-"

"Nessa, I haven't _got _a-"

"Elphaba!" Nessarose yelled shrilly. "Stop with this nonsense about your lack of soul! No one hasn't got a soul! Every human being-"

As one might imagine, I took umbrage at that last bit.

"And Animals don't?" I said, hotly, first. Nessarose said nothing, which pissed me off _majorly_. "Maybe I'm not human, Nessa, I sure don't look the part," I said, purely to provoke her. She went on ignoring me.

"In order for Father to marry you, you'll have to accept the Unnamed God and be purified, and confess to your adulterous affa-"

"You want to know what _really _puts me off religion, Nessie my pretty?"

"What?"

"Ignorant fundamentalism!"

"Elphaba!"

"Extremist bullcrap!"

"Why, you- you homewrecker!"

"Bitter maunt!" I yelled back, angry.

"Demon girl!"

"Animal-killer!"

"Green girl-bastard!"

"Armless _bitch!_"

Both of us stopped, breathing heavily. We were shocked, staring at each other.

"Well," I said finally.

"Well," said Nessarose.

"Now that that's over," I went on, "I've got something to-"

I was interrupted by Fiyero, running out of our room.

"Elphaba, we've got a problem," he said.

"What?" I asked.

"Sarima and her entourage are in the courtyard."

"_Shit_."

"Yeah, I know."

…

An hour later, Sarima and Fiyero, locked in the parlor, were screaming Vinkus curses at each other with great force.

And I? I was standing in the hall outside, a twin in each arm-

-being stared at by three identical sets of Fiyero's startling blue eyes.

Irji, Manek, and Nor, ages five, four, and two. Respectively.

Irji looked rather as if he wanted to be somewhere else, Manek looked hostile and conniving- a four year old! And Nor, who looked most like Fiyero, was sitting, sucking her thumb, and staring neutrally at me. After about ten minutes of awkward silence (in the hall- the parlor was anything _but_ silent), Nor pulled her thumb from her mouth and spoke to me.

"Why you an' dat baby gween?" she asked.

Of course.

"Because," I said, believing in being as frank with children as with adults, even more so, for they were less apt to spread rumors maliciously-"My father was a bas-" Well, maybe not quite _that _honest- "He was an idiot."

Nor looked confused and stuck her thumb back in her mouth.

"I think it's nasty," said Manek. "Like puke."

I was _not _in a good mood. "Yours looks like poop," I snapped, not of course that I meant it. But you did _not _want to go near me when I was driven to paraphrase Avaric. Explosions could ensue.

"Puke isn't green, you twit," said Irji, "it's yellow."

"Their skin is still nasty."

So _that _was who Manek reminded me of. Avaric. How _lovely_.

"_You're_ nasty," I responded.

"You are."

"No, you are!"

"You!"

"You!"

"You!"

Frex, walking by, interrupted. "Never argue with a four-year-old," he said. "You'll lose."

Manek smirked.

I growled and settled in to wait for Fiyero.


	18. Right or Wrong?

**A/N: Here's another chapter. I'm so done with my homework for the whole weekend. We listened to Wicked for half the class in Theatre Arts yesterday, _isn't it_ _wonderful, Chistery? _Yes, that's paraphrased, I care not a whit. Well, I do, but I'm too lazy to go reverse it. **

**Disclaimer: It isn't mine, not any of it. **

We all sat in miraculous silence for a while, but a few moments later, (almost thankfully, seeing as how I was about to slap the smirk off of that little ass Manek's face, no matter how much resemblance it bore to Fiyero's) we heard Sarima's voice through the door. Well, snatches of it, anyhow.

"Forsake your- for a whoring little- not even human- got you imprisoned- saddled with monster children- are you sure they're even yours?"

I was absolutely certain my face was positively eggplant by now.

"That is _it_!" I fumed, getting up. Frex, walking back down the hall, got saddled holding the twins. I hurried to the door, tried the handle. It wasn't locked, after all. I slammed it shut behind me as I strode into the room. A look of intense relief spread over Fiyero's face, matched in fervor by the look of hatred on Sarima's. I stalked right up to her. Standing about four inches over her, I spoke- yelled- right down into her face.

"Look," I said, "you've never met me, but you want to call me a whoring bitch? Go the hell ahead, I don't care, I've been called worse. Much worse. But," I said, shoving her a little, "Don't you ever, _ever_, call my children monsters, you- you- malcontent!"

A strange look crossed Fiyero's face at the sound of that word. Probably he was wondering why I hadn't been able to come up with a better insult, I was wondering the same thing myself. But I wasn't finished. I bent closer to Sarima's face, anger taking hold of me. "You love your children, don't you?" I asked her. She nodded cautiously, fearfully. "You complain that Fiyero wasn't there when you had them? Well, guess the hell _what_. I doubt you've ever been through a pregnancy in a six-by-four prison cell, having your unborn child called a hideous, murdering aberration by your own dear _father_, have you?" I was crying, by now, and that seemed to frighten her too. Fiyero came over to us, and gently he pulled me back from Sarima, and into his arms.

"And in case you wanted to know," I said over my shoulder, "the children _are_ Fiyero's. Firstly, because I don't cheat-" Fiyero coughed awkwardly- "and secondly, you've never seen them, but Fala has Fiyero's eyes, and Liir's hair is the shade that is the exact middle between ours." Sarima stood silently, dumbfounded.

"Fae," said Fiyero, "you go back out there. I think I'll be –done- soon- all right?"

Having said what I'd needed to say, I nodded, and stalked out.

Fiyero was right; a few moments later Sarima emerged, and without a word to anyone, she gathered Irji, Manek, and Nor- all of whom Fiyero kissed goodbye- and the rest of her entourage- whom he didn't- and was gone.

Fiyero kissed me by the window, watching them go. "We're getting married!" he exclaimed. My face was bright and stretched with smiling, and my heart was full.

And yet- worry still dogged me as I lay sleeplessly in bed beside Fiyero that night.

Everything was going right- for _me_.

Something was bound to go wrong.

…

I was to be right in my prediction, showing at least some small vestige of the magical intuition I was supposed to have, but not until later in the day was it proven.

I awoke before Fiyero, as I usually did, and slipped out of bed. I stood and watched him sleep, lovingly, for a moment, but practicality soon took over. I turned and again walked down the hall to the bathroom. This time, fortunately, Nessarose was not there to lecture me.

I didn't melt in the bath or commit any serious social gaffes or get myself arrested at breakfast with some minister from the Palace (an alarming state of affairs, to be sure- I spent the entire meal with my head down, staring at my plate, hoping not to be noticed or recognized). My wedding dress fit, I didn't sneeze at the flowers, the twins didn't even cry the whole morning.

Everything was going like clockwork.

I was struggling to button the back of my dress by twisting my arms into some quite strange positions, when I felt the button ease in- by the hand of someone standing behind me. I turned on my heel, unsure of what to expect, only to see a brilliant smile in a face framed by golden girls radiating back at me.

"Elphie!" exclaimed Glinda, wrapping me in an embrace. "Nessie sent for me the moment you got here, I couldn't believe it, seeing you again after all this time! How could you have gone and left me like that! All alone in the Emerald City!" she smiled prettily again. "I've forgiven you, though, of course; you always _did _take against things in the strangest ways! But I'm here to wish you happiness in your marriage and better nights than I have in mine!"

I grinned back at her, with genuine happiness.

Maybe I'd been wrong. Maybe everything _was _going to go right, for once.

Unfortunately, I was to have been right the first time.


	19. Promise

**A/N: Something bad…is happening in this chapter. Sorry. I'm very, very sorry, but I didn't do it on purpose, honest I didn't. Something just came over my pen and things started writing themselves! A few of my political pathologies have inserted themselves, here, I'm afraid; when the Wizard says something, you know I pretty much think the opposite. Anyone who can guess what political thing of today I have the Wizard yelling about gets a piece of cake. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

"And now," said Frex, finally, "you may kiss the bride."

I cleared my throat, and Frex rolled his eyes. "Or Elphaba may kiss the groom, if she so prefers."

"Thank you," I said, and then Fiyero and I kissed, I kissed him long and hard, so long Frex just went ahead and said, "I now pronounce you husband and wife," anyway, even though we weren't done kissing yet. I kissed him as everyone cheered and laughed. I kissed him until, suddenly, they stopped, and so did we.

The Wizard stood at the courtyard gate, a dozen Gale Forcers behind him. I pulled myself out of Fiyero's arms, and we ran to where Glinda was holding the twins. I took them both into my arms and kissed them. Fiyero caught up to me, took Liir and- handed him to Frex, who had followed behind us.

"Fae," he said quietly. "If you want them safe, you have to leave them here." I knew he was right, I knew it, but I shook my head vehemently and cradled Fala closer as tears began to form in my eyes. "Elphaba," Fiyero grabbed me, turned me towards him, made me look into his eyes, just like Fala's eyes- "If you love them, Elphaba, let them go."

The tears spilled, but didn't burn. A knot formed in my stomach. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to curl up with Fiyero and Fala and Liir and be transported somewhere where we could just _be_. I looked deep into Fala's blue eyes. _Don't forget me_, I prayed silently, then, in a sudden inadvertent burst- _God, please, please, please don't let them forget me. Let me come back to them. Let me live._ I was praying, but I couldn't care. All I could care about was my heart being torn out of my chest as Frex gently took Fala from my arms.

"Take care of them," I said, "until we come back. Love them like you could never love me. _Promise me_."

Frex held my gaze. So many unsaid words, so much between us. We were father and daughter, whatever the biological truth, whatever things he had done wrong in raising me, whatever words he couldn't bring himself to say, all this hung in the air between us.

"I promise," he said.

Fiyero put his arm around me, supporting me, as we walked towards the Wizard, my ruined bloody heart being ripped even further apart with every step I took.

"You promised," I said to the Wizard, my voice weak and shaking with passionate hatred. "You promised you'd never come after us!"

"Dear child," the Wizard said with false benevolence, "did you truly believe I would honor that? How innocent you-"

I reached out and raked my nails across his face. He shoved me and sent me tumbling to the ground.

"Don't you touch her!" Fiyero yelled, his face dark with rage. He lunged for the Wizard, but two guards grabbed him and held him back.

"Load them into the wagon," the Wizard commanded the guards.

"No."

The voice was calm, smooth, mature, graceful, all this in one simple syllable. "You will leave them alone, as you promised."

Glinda was standing, walking towards us, her long blue skirts flowing around her, her golden curls a halo of light. She looked like a saint, an angel, mythical Lurlina herself, flown down again to save the eternally Godforsaken Oz.

The Wizard stared at her. "Lady Glinda," he said finally, "this is none of your affair."

"Well, I'm making it my damned affair," she said uncharacteristically, sharply, authoritatively, so unlike the Glinda I had known at Shiz- but then we were both different. Older, stronger, better, closer in the ways that we had adopted and yet more different at the same time.

"I'm making it my affair," Glinda said again, "because I was never brave enough to stand up for what was right, like Elphie always was. I was never strong enough to be like her. And now, it's my turn to be strong, to be brave. I'm not just going to sit here and let you drag her away from here, away from her children!"

"They're welcome to come," leered the Wizard.

"Go to hell!" I yelled, and I flew at him, intending to rip his head off with my bare hands, but a guard leapt forward and pinned my arms behind me.

"Lady Glinda, I am the ruler of this country," said the Wizard. "Miss Elphaba-" _Mrs. Elphaba, now_, I couldn't help but think, and smile inwardly, despite everything- "is a criminal. She's a terrorist, an assassin-"

"A _failed _assassin," I threw in to assuage the alarmed look on Frex's face.

"-and she and Fiyero have threatened my life."

"You threatened our lives!" I screamed back at him.

"You're a terrorist! You don't _get _rights!" he yelled back.

"Well, at least in _that _I'm no different from anyone else in this damned country, am I?" I howled back. "No one has rights! Don't you see? First, the Quadlings, then the Animals, who the hell's next!"

"Here's a clue: you are!" growled the Wizard quietly.

"Let us go!" yelled Fiyero.

_If you love them, Elphaba, let them go_.

"Let _him_ go," I said quietly. "He's done nothing."

"Elphaba, don't do this," cried Fiyero.

"No, Fiyero. Take care of our children, all right? Don't let them forget me."

"I'm afraid he won't be able to do that," said the Wizard. "You've forgotten, Miss Elphaba. Your dear…husband _has _done something wrong this time. Don't you recall? He held me hostage with that…scalpel, I believe it was."

"You bastard," I said.

"Let them go!" screamed Glinda.

"No! Elphaba must be punished for her crimes against this government!" yelled the Wizard, eyes blazing maniacally. "High treason, conspiracy to assassinate Madame Morrible-" A shudder ran through me. _How does he know that? Oh, God…_ "-holding me hostage, blackmailing me with my life, escaping prison, obstructing justice, being a member of a subversive organization, probably aiding and abetting rebel Animals, too!"

"Oh, _shut_ up," I spat at him. He leaned closer, so that only I could hear him.

"Tread very carefully, Miss Elphaba. This time, you're not pregnant. You won't escape so easily." I spat in his eye. He swore and the guards began to drag us away.

Very near the gate, a strange old woman shoved an old broom into my hands.

"This will bring you to your destiny," she said obliquely.

"What?" I gasped- she was so familiar- but when I looked up from the broom, she was gone. The guard holding me looked hesitantly from the broom to the Wizard, his question evident in his eyes.

"Oh, let her keep it," laughed the Wizard. "It's given me an idea. Her destiny, yes- a prisoner sweeping the bowels of Southstairs for the rest of her miserable days!"

The woman's strange prophecy and the Wizard's evil laughter lingered in my ears as I sobbed in Fiyero's arms, heading to a destination of hopelessness in the back of a prison wagon with a damned broom instead of my children.


	20. Blood for Water

**A/N: Oh, my, God. Gilmore Girls sucks. I hate Christopher, I hate ASP, I hate the world right now! kicks something Boy, the world better hope nothing this bad ever actually happens to me, because if I can get this worked up about a TV show (and, before, books and movies, too)- well, all I can say is, look the heck out. Also, warning on this chapter: Read it to the end. Another warning: This chapter contains my explanation behind Elphaba's "You think this is all so new to me. You think I am such a virgin." And, it's not pleasant. It…well…wasn't a voluntary thing. So…be warned. To quote that one dude on Grey's Anatomy, "you're scary and damaged." About Elphaba, now, obviously. But it wasn't on the show. Oh, just read the chapter! Also, remember- Elphaba's lost almost everything- again. She's feeling pretty damn broken and defeated right now, so bear with her (and me). This is, basically, what she did to herself in the mauntery in the book, only different. Got it? And for the record, this will _not _be the last chapter. No freaking way I'm done yet!**

**Disclaimer: Not mine.**

Finally, I fell asleep, and so did Fiyero. We slept and slept and slept, in the way that you sleep after you've cried for hours and you simply have nothing left inside. I was cold, I was floating, and empty, and there was still so much inside of me, yet at the same time everything had been drained away and there was nothing for that hellish paradox but to sleep.

We slept for two days, and when I woke up, the indescribable knot of tears in the pit of my stomach, that feeling of mingled helplessness and incredible pain, had faded. My head was no longer a fuzzy blur of rage and sorrow. It was empty. My soul was empty, my heart was empty, my brain was empty, my courage was gone. Simply put, I was closing myself off. My emotions were too much for me to deal with without going completely insane, so I locked them in a bottle and hid it away, deep inside of me. I'd had practice. I'd done it before. I went limp.

When the wagon stopped and we were yanked, blinking, out into the too-bright sunlight, Elphaba, the fighting Elphaba, the proud, defiant, strong, Elphaba, the Elphaba who was a childless mother and a motherless child both, the loving Elphaba, disappeared. And she was replaced by a ghost, a shadow-woman whose newfound soul was so fraught and fragrant with raw pain that she-once again- had to hide its existence, and that of the rest of her, and she had no self at all.

The guards pulled us out, onto the road; I collapsed on the ground in a heap. Fiyero, who had been growing more and more fearful at my emotionlessness, panicked.

"Fae, Elphie, come on," he said, pleading. He pulled me to my feet. "What's the matter with you? Stand up straight, spit at them, bite them for God's sake!" His voice broke. "Please..."

"I- I can't," I sobbed, shuddering involuntarily. "I can't be strong anymore. I-I-I care too much…they- you- broke my defenses, I-"

Fiyero shushed me. He pulled me to him and made me stand.

"Come on," he said gently. He supported me, for once. He led me past the guards, a broken ragdoll, a shadow of myself. The tears running down _but not burning_ my cheeks were tears of shame, now, as well as pain.

But I could not put myself back together again, and the 'king's' men certainly weren't going to help. Although the horses might.

They shoved us roughly into the cage that descends publicly into Southstairs. A small crowd gathered to watch my misery. The Wizard stood at a podium.

"We are here to imprison these terrorists, my would-be assassins, who were part of a conspiracy to overthrow the human government and replace it with an Animal one, enslaving all humans who had not resisted my great, beneficial, _wonderful_ rule!"

Everyone gasped, including Fiyero. I didn't, though. Who gave a shit what the Wizard said? I didn't give a shit about anything (_I did though, too much, that's why I couldn't-)_

Fiyero tried to engage me, tried too hard.

"Did he make that up right this minute?" he asked. I knew what was expected of me; to scream out, to deny the charges and proclaim their righteousness simultaneously, to rally grandly, to sway the crowd, at least in the deepest, darkest, depths of their consciousness. But it took all I had just to kept standing. All the fight in me was back in Munchkinland with my children. _Home is where the heart is_.

I half wanted to curl myself into the fetal position and just _die_. But I lacked even the energy to do that. Funny thing- I hadn't the energy to die.

The cage began to lower, creakily. The crowd began to jeer and cheer (jeer someone, cheer someone, funny how close the words are. Funny the things you notice when your mind is a blank slate, or when you are trying to make it that way). Fiyero shook me.

"What the hell, Elphaba? Where _are _you? What's the matter with you, get a hold of yourself!" Sweet Oz, he was _crying_. Why did I always have to _hold everyone up, damn it! _I needed a support system, for once! I couldn't always stand on my own two feet, sometimes I had to fall and I needed someone there to catch me! Why couldn't someone else just do the holding up, the holding together, for once!

"I have no self to get a hold of," I said, matter-of-factly.

"Elphaba, no, please don't talk like that," Fiyero begged.

"I can't help it," I said.

Fiyero grew silent and held me closer. "How are you going to get back to Fala and Liir If you give up?" he asked. I looked up at him, fear twisting the innards of my stomach, of my empty womb.

"I-I don't know how…I would…even…" I faltered, "even if I _did_…"

He heard the tremor in my voice, saw the threat of impending tears in my eyes. He knew what I needed, and he gave it. He held me close and stroked my hair, and the last image that the hateful crowd had of us was our love and pain intertwining in a deep embrace, backlit by the sunset, making our shadows just dark silhouettes against the Emerald City sky.

Like a stake does to a bending tomato plant, Fiyero was helping to straighten my spine, literally and figuratively both, although I was still too broken to realize it.

We were pulled out of the now fully lowered cage and into an antechamber. Three guards grabbed Fiyero, two shoved me into the center of the room.

"Undress," one commanded.

"Damn you!" Fiyero screamed at them, getting it, predicting, _thinking_."Damn you to hell!"But I wasn't; I couldn't, my mind had clouded over again, and I couldn't put the pieces of anything, especially myself, together.

One of the guards holding Fiyero threatened him with his sword. Fiyero didn't seem to care, he kept struggling, but I wasn't about to let him die, to let the hollow cavity inside me fill with acid and burst and consume me whole, so I obeyed.

I closed my eyes tight and felt tears spill between eyelashes and green skin. I tried to ignore the insects –_yes that's what they are and all they are, it is it is it is_- but when one touched too far, below the waist, memory overwhelmed me-

_-coldnightallalonenowheretogomidnightwanderingthroughthealleysofthecitydownonthe groundoutofmyselfwakeupwakeupthisisanightmaretheydidn'teventouchmeabovethewaist_

_ohGodhandinsidemegetitoutgetitoutpleaseGodpleaseredbloodwhitesnowgreenskinbruisedandbrokenohshittheycurseitsahelldemonandiamiamiamnothingican'tbeanythingithurtstoo muchiamnotcryingiamnotgivingthemthatbutiamscreaming-_

_­_

-and I was, I was screaming, really screaming, screaming back in the antechamber of Southstairs. I screamed and screamed and screamed, the sound something feral and primitive released from the opening of all my dark hidden bottles at once

-_rememberTurtleHeartNessaroseiambloodsheis watertheytookhisbloodbloodandwaterbloodandwaterbloodandwater_

_blood_for_water-_

-They backed away from me, scared to death of what I was going to do, and Fiyero shoved them off of him and rushed to me, and covered me with himself, and he broke down then, all his fear and rage and sorrow and pain flowing out in tears that didn't hurt as they flowed down the line of my shoulder, purifying me, and I held him, because the fight was back in me and I could stand on my own two feet, just as I always had, just as I always would…

_-except when I was flying-_


	21. Swaying and Sweeping

**A/N: It's been quite a while, hasn't it? Well, I can't go to theatre/singing because I have allergies and they broke my throat so now if I try to sing it really, really, sucks, and when I talk I sound like Kirstie Alley. It's awkward. I finally get to type this up, I wrote it in gym class a few days ago. I really have to stop making Elphaba sick, it makes me sick, and totally un-psychosomatically this time! You'll see. I'm disturbed by my writing health predictions!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Wicked…but it would appear that this fanfiction owns my health. **

The Wizard made good on at least one promise.

The guards, once a day, would pull me out of my cell and force me to sweep the hallway as they made themselves a jeering gauntlet. I could have cared less. The sweeping allowed me an opportunity to look for a way out, using all my training, trying desperately to find an escape. Also, the guards' teasing had nothing on 18-year-old college kids, who in turn had nothing on toddling Munchkin brats. In other words, I was over it. But about the escape- I had come up with something before, I could do it again. And although the incentive was the same and the stakes were just as high- my children- they were more real to me now. I loved _them_ because they were _them_, and not because they were my children. Even though they were only a month old, I could tell. I could see their intelligence and quite a few of their character traits in their eyes.

I loved them.

I loved Fiyero, and they had tried to kill him. I loved my babies, and they pulled me away from them to try to break me.

No, not 'they.' 'He.' The Wizard. _He _wanted to pull all the love out of me, to suck out the soul I finally knew I had, to make me a broken empty shell. He had almost succeeded, but I could.not.let.him.win. So I pushed the broom down the hallway, head ducked, ignoring them, but not letting them know I had put myself back together. I had. Fiyero was my glue.

When I had finished sweeping, the guards started to take the broom from me. I felt it twitch back and forth, just slightly. I nearly gasped but managed to hold it in. The guards grabbed the broom and shoved it back into the cell, but they didn't let _me _reenter it.

"You're to see the Wizard," said one.

_Off to see the Wizard, the terrible dictator of Oz_, I thought sarcastically, but aloud I made a thin whimper and then said nothing. Despite the fact that this was part of the vague plan I had to give myself any sort of advantage I could, I sickened myself and I knew I wouldn't be able to keep it up for long. I was not good at playing broken. I winked at Fiyero, whose worried face was pressed up against the bars in the door's window, as I walked past.

…

They brought me to his office.

"Darling daughter," he said after they had left.

"You have a _problem_," I informed him before I could bite it back. I was _not _good at this. His false joviality disappeared.

"Yes, I do," he said. "You."

"Oh, _very _clever," I responded, giving it up.

Without further ado he reached for my throat and grabbed it, hard, choking me as he pushed me up against the wall, shockingly strong.

"Ah-ah," I choked, gasping for air, lungs pumping like hell for something that was not there.

Red spots danced before my eyes, calling back the corn exchange- who could lose that much blood and live, Yero my hero, all the pain and fear spaced across those few moments-

Finally, as the black was closing in on my vision and I was about to pass out, the Wizard released me. I dropped to the floor, sucking in great gulps of precious air. The Wizard laughed at me and kicked me hard in the stomach, like a disobedient _d_og, not that the distinction would have mattered much to him. I tried to speak, but my voice was hoarse and wounded and came only with effort. He laughed again, more terribly than before, and I realized what he had done, and all it symbolized. _Crap. _

"Damn you," I managed to choke out, using all the air in my lungs.

I was not strong. I was mentally and physically bruised from the day before, the faultline in my heart grew wider and wider with each passing day I was away from Fala and Liir, I hadn't trained in about ten months and my legs were still sore from walking to Munchkinland, and now I could barely speak and my stomach hurt hellishly.

The Wizard threw me to the floor on my injured stomach and snapped his fingers. His guards came in and lifted the back of the thin grey shirt I had been given, and began whipping me.

Fire danced along my back. _I will not cry out, I will not cry out, I will not cry out_. I repeated it over and over again until my brain became numb and stopped receiving the pain messages from my nerve cells.

Finally, the whipping stopped. The Wizard kicked me in the stomach again, I curled up involuntarily to protect myself.

"Cry, damnit!" he yelled at me.

"Go to hell!" I managed.

One of the guards yanked me up by the hair and another began punching me in the stomach. At last, they stopped and dropped me to the floor, where I curled up again and threw up blood.

"All right," said the Wizard, "take her back."

…

When Fiyero saw me, he just murmured, "Oh, Elphaba," and held me. "You didn't give in," he said, not a question.

"No," I affirmed hoarsely, "I didn't."

_Not only that_, I thought, looking at the broom, _but I just may have found a way out_.


	22. Praying

**A/N: I know this is short, but there'll be more soon. **

**Disclaimer: GM's, not mine. **

This would require a plan. Adeptness, though I winced at the word. We had to get the guards to somehow bring Fiyero out into the hallway with me when I was supposed to be sweeping. And, having the blood I did running through my veins, I knew how to do it. We timed the guards' passes by our cell- every five and one half minutes. So, we arranged to be speaking loudly about my sweeping at just that time.

"I'm only glad you don't have to watch me sweep," I said as I heard footsteps approach. Slowly, they stopped. I smiled wickedly; they were listening, they sensed a chance to further satiate their appetite for sadism.

"I don't think I could bear it," added Fiyero. "I don't know how you can- being you- it must be so hard-"

"It doesn't matter to me, so long as you're not hurt by it," I said. I faked crying noises, and then we heard footsteps moving quickly away.

Fiyero and I grinned at each other.

Phase one was complete, a phrase I hadn't said in a while. In a way, I missed the excitement of the Resistance, the feeling of _doing_ something. But- that was something to think of later, when Fala and Liir were safe with Fiyero and I.

Sure enough, the next day when the guards came to pull me out of the cell, they brought Fiyero, too.

"What do you want him for? Leave him alone!" I cried, faking tears but not anger.

As I swept, the moment I got within two feet of the small window's ledge, Fiyero kicked both the guards in their- sensitive- areas in rapid succession, grabbed a small pistol from one of them, and ran towards me.

I stepped onto the windowsill and he followed. We quickly mounted the broom, I kicked out the window, pushed off the ledge, and prayed.

We prayed in that moment of suspendedness, prayed to every deity we'd ever heard of, prayed like- well, like hell. It struck me, for a moment, how much I had changed.

And in a good way, for the better, for the broom lifted, floating like a hawk of a river of swift air, above the Emerald City, which was a clot of gray and green belching smoke from up here. We whooped with delight, our relief and joy bursting out of us as beautiful sound, and I pointed the broom east, towards my children.

We would be home soon.


	23. You Saved Me

**A/N: Here's the next chapter. This one has some Fiyero POV in it, don't worry, it'll be clear. Um, this has Elphaba telling her, uh, story in it, so…be warned. **

**Disclaimer: It's not mine! WAAAH!**

"Elphaba," said Fiyero after we'd landed the broom and were curled together on a carpet of soft pine needles at the base of a forest tree, "please. The way you reacted- to those guards- well, I mean, of course it was natural, but- I- I don't know- I get the feeling there's something more- from this, and from what you've said before, back in the corn exchange- why you won't let me touch you below your waist, why you won't let me look at you…" he trailed off, seeing the look on my face. I turned my head away, still in his arms.

Almost inaudibly, I said, "There is."

"What?" asked Fiyero.

"There is, there is more," I said.

"Elphaba," he responded, gently, tilting my chin back towards him, "Tell me. Please."

"You know how I told you I wasn't a virgin, and this wasn't new to me?" I asked him. He nodded slowly.

"Well, I didn't mean it the way you thought."

I felt him tense as he guessed the truth.

"Tell me," he urged softly.

"It was the night after I'd left Glinda. I had nowhere to go, it was getting cold and dark, and I didn't know the city, and I stumbled into an alley in a- a bad part of town."

I paused, hearing Yero's breathing quicken. This must be as hard for him to hear as it was for me to tell, but we both needed it. Knowing this, I continued with new strength.

"I walked down the alley. I was getting a little scared, but I guessed with my skin, no one would want to touch me…but it was dark. There- there were three of them, I think. Before I even saw them, they had me down on the ground. One of them pulled off my skirt, they – they didn't even bother with the top. He- he had a knife. I screamed and tried to get away, and he cut me with it. Right here," I said, gesturing to the spot just above my groin where beneath my dress lay a small scar. "So I stopped yelling. I didn't want to die, not now that I had just discovered a purpose. And the first one, he- well, he-" My tears were flowing freely now. Fiyero grabbed me, held me tighter, knowing it was what I needed-

"He raped me, first. I bled, because it was the first time- and he laughed at it, laughed at me, laughed at what he had done! Then he- oh, God- he shoved his hand-" I couldn't go on, I was crying too hard. But Fiyero beside me gave me strength.

"That's why- why I won't be touched there, by hands. Then the others- both- did it, they raped me, and then one of them saw my skin, and they cursed me, both of them, called me a hell-demon." I laughed bitterly. "_Me_. And one of them kicked me in the stomach as they ran off as I threw up again and again and stayed curled up there for hours and hours, not sleeping, just trying to erase it. And I nearly succeeded."

"Oh, Elphaba," said Fiyero. "Oh, God- I'm so sorry someone did that to you, there are no words- if I found them I'd rip them limb from limb with my own hands-"

"No, you wouldn't," I said softly.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because," I said. "I'd do it first."

"Elphaba, I-I am so- oh, God- that's so awful-"

"Ssh, Yero," I whispered. "Just hold me." And he did, for a long time.

After a while, I spoke.

"You saved me," I said,

"What?"

"You cured me. You saved me, Yero." My voice broke. "You gave me love."

He kissed me, then, soft and gentle.

"Thank you," I whispered. "I love you."

"And I love you," he told me, kissing my hair. "More than anything."

…

_Fiyero_:

_Waking, the first thing I noticed was _her_. Never before has I awoken to this- to the warm weight of Elphaba's dark head against my chest, her arms sweetly twined around me, smiling gently in her sleep. Always, always before she had woken up before me and slipped out, leaving me clutching air. Back in the corn exchange, it had always given me a horrible scare, just upon waking, that she was gone forever. _

_But she never was; she always came back to me. _

_She told me she loved me. Even before knowing what I now did about her, I wouldn't have taken her for the type to speak those words so readily. _

_But then again, she was never one not to speak her mind, either. I looked down at her now, ebony hair flowing over her green shoulders, her dark dress thrown over her body, curled into me, and I worried. She'd gotten terribly thin again, even after such a short time in prison. Maybe she was even dangerously thin, I wasn't sure. But she was strong, I reminded myself. After all, she'd carried and given birth to twins in worse condition. Suddenly, though, this research, this considering of her, was not enough. I needed to talk to Elphaba. _

"_Elphaba," I said, "Fae, wake up."_


	24. Sunrise

**A/N: Okay, another day, another chapter, another crappy math test…oh Late Arrival Day tomorrow, woot-woot: ) Once again, this is not the end!**

**Disclaimer: Even if I, my mom, most everyone on here, and now my doctor thinks GM is a sadist, he still owns it and I don't, but HE ONLY GETS TO OWN IT BECAUSE THE WIZARD OF OZ IS PUBLIC DOMAIN! I think… Anyhow, this chapter contains some dialogue right out of Wicked, but in Elphaba's POV anyway.**

_I'm dreaming. Or is it that I'm awake now, and I _was _dreaming? I can't tell, I can't tell anything, my head is too full. There's blood, and water, and pain, and babies, and a billion other things filling it. So I let go of them, even though I've never been so good at that, and I focus on now. _

_I am training myself, kicking and punching a facsimile person in the dark cellar of the Resistance headquarters. I'm taking out all my anger on it, every bit of rage I've ever felt, which is quite a bit and growing by the second. This, our leader tells me, is what makes me a good fighter. I never run out of anger. _

_am training myself, kicking and punching a facsimile person in the dark cellar of the Resistance headquarters. I'm taking out all my anger on it, every bit of rage I've ever felt, which is quite a bit and growing by the second. This, our leader tells me, is what makes me a good fighter. I never run out of anger. _

Yes, _I think as he says this, _but what about a good person?

_I don't think about that too long, though. I've never been a good person- not that I'm not good, in the obedient sense of the word, most of the time; not that I'm evil, most of the time, but I'm not good at _being _a person. And I don't know if that's a good or bad thing, considering what _people _have been doing lately. This makes me angrier, and I kick and punch and hurt. _

_The bad thing is that my enemy has no face. Sometimes, I imagine my own father's there. Oh, I know he tries, but he's not a very good actor. He doesn't really love me, but I'm all right with that. Really, I'm fine, perfectly fine, the fact that my hand is bleeding through my glove from punching so hard has nothing to do with it, I'm fine, really, I am. I'm always fine –punch- I don't need anything –kick- I can stand on my- punch- own- kick- damn- punch-two- punch- FEET!_

_But apparently I can't, because I punch too hard and miss the target and fly to the floor, collapsing on the ground, which I hit even harder, until finally I stop and gasp for air. _

"_Fae," says Dragon, another member, "are you all right?" _

"_I'm fine!" I say, harsher than I had intended. _

"_All right, all right," she says, offended. "I only asked." _

"_Well, I'm fine," I say, trying to soften it. I'm not so good at that, though. I never have been good at conversation or dealing with what's socially acceptable. _I'm _not socially acceptable; why should my actions have to be? _

_Actions speak louder than words, but not looks. Not mine. I don't get the chance to make a bad first impression. All I have to do is walk under a light. _

_Our cell leader walks up behind us, masked as we all are. Still, I can sense it's him. I'm not sure I'm supposed to be able to do this, not sure anyone else really can. But I tell myself it's normal, I don't have any natural talent at sorcery. _I DON'T

"_Fae," he says, "it's me, the leader." I don't say I know. The way he always introduces himself and so does most everyone else makes me think…maybe Madame Morrible was wrong (but then again, maybe she wanted me to try to prove her wrong. Or maybe I'm just paranoid). _

"_I have a mission for you," he says, and then, as if he's been reading my thoughts (or, more worrisome, I his) "you went to Madame Morrible's school, didn't you?" _

_That was how it started, my nightmare. I know now I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming and I think in reality…I don't know…I could still be wrong…_

"_A coup?" he said. "An assassination? A bomb? A kidnapping? What? Just the naure of it, not the specifics, _what_?" _

_I wanted to tell him, but I knew that for his sake, for my sake, for the cause's sake…I couldn't. He might do something rash, like follow me, or try to stop me, or try to help me, and get us all shot or blown up or captured. _

"_Not only can I not tell you," I said, "I don't even know. I'll be told only my small part, and I'll do it. I only know it's a complicated maneuver with a lot of interlocking pieces." _

_Some of this was a lie, I did know what we were going to do, the big picture, and I knew my part already, but I did not know how. _

"_Are you the dart?" he asked me. "The knife? The fuse?" _

_I smiled sadly and tried to lie convincingly, "My dearie, my poppet, I am too green to walk into a public place and do something bad. It's all too expected. Security guards watch me like owls on a mouse. My very presence provokes alarm and heightened vigilance. No, no, the part I'll play will be a handmaiden's part, a little assistance in the shadows." _

_He suspected I was lying, I could see it in those blue eyes. I usually could read Fiyero like a book. He was so open, so naïve, I thought sometimes. I envied his carelessness, his lack of a need to be involved. _

"_Don't do it," he blurted suddenly. _

"_You're selfish," I told him, knowing his reasons, "and you're a coward. I love you, my sweet, but your protests about this are wrongheaded. You just want to preserve _my _insignificant life, you don't even have a moral feeling about whether I'm doing right or wrong. Not that I want you to, not that I care what you think about it-" lies, all "But I only observe, your objections are of the weakest sort. Now this isn't something to be argued. Two weeks from tonight, come back." _

_"Will the- the _action_- be completed by then? Who decides?" _

_"I don't know what it is yet-" again I was lying, but better this time- "and I don't know who decides, so don't ask me." That at least, was the truth. I knew our cell was only a small part of something larger, so really, I didn't know who decided what. _

"_Fae-" he paused. "_Elphaba…_" his voice trailed off, then returned, but faded, and I couldn't see him anymore, I wasn't in my little room anymore, I was floating in a grey fog… "Fae," I heard him say from far off, "wake up." _

So I did, foggy and disoriented.

"Yero? I'm not asleep, what do you mean, no, I can't tell you, I can't, I said!" I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, reality and perception of my own body returning to me. There I was, I was lying safe in Fiyero's arms at the base of an ancient Quoxwood tree in a forest not too far from my early childhood home. I was twenty-four, I had twins, I was married, I had killed no one (but don't think I wouldn't if Madame Morrible got within a hundred feet of me) and I was a far more stable person than I had been ten months ago. Most of the time.

"Fabala-Fae, what are you talking about?"

"I'm sorry, Yero, I had a dream…"

"What about? What can't you tell me?"

"I dreamed about that night back above the corn exchange, when I wouldn't tell you about my assignment."

"Ah, yes, _that_ night."

"Mm. Remind me, then, how far are we from Colwen Grounds?" I asked.

"I think…I have no idea." Fiyero gave me a perplexed look. "Why the devil would you ask me that?"

"I don't know; I guess I'm still not fully _here_. Come on, let's go check the road, I'll know once we're there," I said, buttoning the front of my dress. We walked the short distance to the road.

"I think…how long did we fly last night?"

"Nearly ten hours, please tell me we don't have to do that again?" pleaded Fiyero.

"We don't. It's only about three hours from here, seeing as how from the air we can cut across a lot and it's much faster anyway."

We mounted the broom again, and I kicked off the ground. We flew quickly above the treetops, the forest quickly giving way in our sight to the rolling green and amber farmlands of Munchkin land, the purplish hills of Rush Margins floating hazily nearby, the mountains of the Vinkus fading into the grey-pink morning sky from the corner of my eye.

"Fae," whispered Fiyero, "look straight ahead."

I did, and gasped.

The sunrise, full of whites and pinks and yellows and hazy purples and smoky blues, blended together in a fantasia of indescribably beautiful color. The cold, nearly-fall air whistled around us as we flew,

straight into the sunrise.


	25. The Lack of Speech

**A/N: I'm sorry, it's been awhile, hasn't it. So anyway, uh… the beginning of the chapter is in 3rd person, but then it goes back to normal…you'll see. **

**Disclaimer: Doesn't belong to me. **

_They loaded into the wagons and carriages that were owned or commandeered, dozens upon dozens of them. The Wizard wasn't making any mistakes this time. _

"_Let's go, come on!" he screamed. "We've got to catch those dangerous terrorists!" _

_There were wanted posters of the pair all over the Emerald City; but its citizens weren't very alarmed. After all, the theory went, how far could a green woman and a man covered in blue diamonds get, on foot at that? The Wizard hadn't told them about the broom; he didn't want the pfaithers to start either supporting Elphaba or raising hell themselves by magicking dozens of household implements and flying round on them like idiots, nor did he want the Lurlinists and other pagans howling about prophecies they'd made up that minute, nor did he, really, want the unionists forming a witch hunting mob. _

_He'd take care of that himself. _

_She'd escaped from him twice, she'd threatened his life, she'd never once given in. She'd used the humiliation he'd forced on her to escape. _

_Now, it was personal. _

…

We alighted, this time, within the gates of Colwen Grounds. The guards turned and looked ready to shoot (if their old muskets even could; but note how they hadn't even bothered to warn us when the Wizard showed up. Loyalists all, despite the damn drought. Hadn't they been listening as secession had been bantered about for years on end? I had, and I hadn't even been here). But when they recognized us, they backed off reluctantly. I stuck out my tongue, not feeling very mature, and they ran off. I laughed.

"Why did you do that?" asked Fiyero.

"Annoyance. Lack of sleep. Sick of being looked at askance by annoying assholes in uniform…or not, for that matter. General bitchiness," I reeled off.

"All right then," said Fiyero. He took my arm and led me towards the house where I banged the huge knocker about six times. By now I was trembling with the anticipation of seeing Fala and Liir again.

A young maid, probably new, opened the door. She stood gaping at us for a moment, then ran screaming down the hall, hopefully to get my father, sister, or great-grandfather. I rolled my eyes.

"I am really getting tired of that," I said. "Doesn't anyone learn how to be tactful anymore?" Fiyero gave me a look.

"I don't mean me, and anyway I certainly don't go around _screaming _like an idiot anytime I see someone with a different-colored skin," I said. "I mean, _really_, they ought to be used to me around here by now. I've only been coming here, summers, since I was, what? Two and a half?"

Those summers saved my life, actually. Wandering the rooms of the big old house, I devoured ancient books, played for once like the child I was, and learned almost everything I knew. During the long hot days when my father had taken Nessarose down to the stream to wade, I occupied myself in other ways. I found books of the laws of Munchkinland dating back a hundred years, histories of Oz from the points of view of various religions, legends, myths, natural science texts. One summer, I taught myself the language spoken among the older and more educated of the Gillikinese (what a book about it was doing in the musty old library of a house in the depths of rural Munchkinland I'll never know). I took the natural science books outside and applied what they said to real life. I climbed trees and ran and grew stronger and louder and less the silent, preternaturally skinny and serious girl I was the rest of the year.

Finally, though, my father came to the door.

"You're not dead," he said after a moment.

"So it would appear, but one can never be sure," I replied.

"I'm told no one's ever broken out of Southstairs once, much less twice," he said.

"Well, Father, is the propaganda machine known as the press really so very likely to print the truth?" I asked him. He groaned and said nothing, ushering us into the house.

The moment I stepped into the foyer, I was very nearly knocked flat by a mobile ball of golden hair and sparkling gown.

"Oh, thank Lurline, you're alive, Elphie!" she cried, sobbing into my shoulder.

"Erm- yes," I said awkwardly, trying to detach myself from her as Fiyero laughed at us.

"I'm sorry," said Glinda, calming down and composing herself. "I just – oh, the babies, you'll want to see the babies, won't you? Of course you do, how silly of me- Linseed! Lin_seed_! Get down here, please, and bring the children!"

The sallow, dour young girl who had looked after the twins the night we'd arrived here the last time came down the stairs slowly, carrying Fala and Liir. Unable to stand it any longer, I rushed halfway up the stairs to her and grabbed the babies. Fala smiled and I could have sworn that she winked at me.

"Don't worry," I told them. "I'm not going to say I'll never leave you again, because let's face it, I probably will, but you shouldn't worry about it. In fact, let's teach you early that just because something's gone out of sight, that doesn't mean it's gone out of existence, just-"

"Elphaba," interrupted Fiyero, smiling. "You do know that they can't understand you, don't you?"

I gave him a look. "I _know _very well that temporary lack of speech does not indicate lack of understanding, Fiyero."

"But-" Wisely, he gave up. "Fine. I guess none of us know, do we?"

_Words are words and what's said is said…my backbone, my breastplate…it'll be all over the valley that the little marrow is green…breakfast in the dirt, breakfast for the bugs…maybe we'll go out in a boat and we'll _tip over_…shall we go out in the woods…slow and deliberate as Elphaba is…fine, if you must know, I'm pregnant…horrors, horrors, horrors…_

"I do," I said.

…

That night, when Fiyero was laying in bed and the twins were in their cribs(I had lost the battle for having them stay in bed with us), I came out of the closet in my nightdress and slipped in beside Fiyero, who reached for me.

"Wait," I said.

He groaned. "_Elphaba_," he said.

"No, this is important."

"Fine." He sat up and I leaned on my elbow. "Hurry up, then."

"We can't stay here," I said. "You know and I know that we can't. Practically, we know that this is the first place the Wizard will look for us, and we can't count on another escape, Fiyero. He may just kill us next time-" I lowered my voice, glancing over at the cribs- "and he may kill the babies too, or take them."

"I _know-_"

"Also, I can't stay here. I just…my family has been very reticent, so far, but sooner or later they're going to find something wrong with something I'm doing and then they will harass me about it until I go screaming mad," I said.

"Well, we talked before about going to the Vinkus," said Fiyero.

"But that would have been to talk to Sarima, and we already did that." Fiyero winced. I went on. "Besides, it's the beginning of autumn and it's far too late to start a journey there," I said.

"Well, I don't know, then. Just make a hiding place here and we'll figure it out," he said. "Please."

"Fine," I relented, and moments later we were both lost in each other.


	26. Squeak

**A/N: The beginning of this is Glinda POV, which I have dedicated to Lillian Townsend… SQUEAK! gets published! Mm…if you need to ask something about the rudiments of a kerosene lamp, ask…I know this from American Girl doll accessories from when I was seven…and again, why don't I use this space in my brain for something more productive than a diagram of an antiquated lighting method I read eight years ago? This is a bit short and doesn't really move things forward a bit, but I needed to put it in :) **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

_I was a bit worried about Elphaba, and all she'd gone through. I thought, really, that I was beginning to understand her better for the first time in my life, and I really wanted to talk seriously to her. So, even though it was a bit late, I walked down the hall to her room and was poised to knock on her door but I paused, hearing a noise. A crash, a laugh that was unmistakably Elphaba's and a chuckle that I guessed was Fiyero's, a rustling, and Elphaba's voice in what could only be described as a squeak. _

_Well, that wasn't something I'd ever have imagined would happen back at Shiz! Milla and Shen-Shen and Pfannee were wrong about that, too, it seemed. _

Well, Glinda, _I thought to myself, _you're a bit slow on the uptake. They have two children, after all. _I guessed I just never thought of Elphie like that. Holding in my laughter, I turned away. _

_Seriousness, it seemed, would have to wait. _

…

Even after Fiyero and I were done and were supposed to be sleeping, every few minutes one of us would start laughing over what he'd done to the lamp. He'd flipped it over, somehow, onto the bed and kerosene had started dripping and we'd thought it would catch on fire, so he blew it out but something had gone wrong and he got a burnt rag in his face for it…then he'd thrown the lamp, which miraculously hadn't broken, and done something _incredibly _dirty with the rag and things in general and I made a squeaking noise more generally associated with Glinda, although not in lovemaking- which had caused me to think of Sir Chuffrey and Glinda, and to share that with Fiyero, so then we laughed even harder like schoolchildren at a slumber party until we tumbled together off the bed and sat laughing on the floor in a heap.

Fiyero smiled at me. "I'm so glad you're all right," he said.

"What do you mean? You think falling on the floor would hurt me?" I asked, pretending offense.

"No- I mean- with everything, that's happened to you, in your life, in prison, everything- most people would not be falling on the floor shrieking with laughter after that."

"And why not?" I asked. "Even though I don't generally make it a practice to get positively giddy with laughter. In fact this is the first time I've ever done it. It feels quite close to insanity, actually."

"Extreme emotion- when you are the most yourself- and insanity, when you are least, have a fine line between them," observed Fiyero, pulling me back into the bed and flipping me over him until I lay on the other side.

"Ow. Maybe you're not the least yourself when you're insane. Maybe you're another facet of yourself…maybe you're even more yourself," I argued. "Maybe insanity's just a combination of extreme emotions."

"In some cases, maybe," said Fiyero. "Not psychosis."

I thought of the Wizard, my father, and shivered.

"No," I agreed, "I don't think so." I rolled over onto my elbow again, facing Fiyero. It was two in the morning at _least_, but I was past caring. "Do you think my father's a psychopath?" I asked him.

"Frex?" he asked, confused.

"No, my real father."

"Well…" Fiyero thought a moment. "He had grandiose delusions, he acted on them. He doesn't seem to be all that firmly in touch with reality…I don't know."

"I think he is. I think he's a sociopath, too. He doesn't have empathy for suffering. Or maybe he's just a bastard."

"Elphaba…" Fiyero looked at me hard. "Why are we talking about this?"

"Oh, I don't know…I just…" I paused for a moment. "I want to _know_ how he could have that done to me. I want to…not understand…but…just see, a little bit, into how he could possibly think of doing that…" I leaned over and turned off the remaining lamp. "Never mind."

Fiyero said nothing, but he wrapped his arms around me and held me for the rest of the night, until I woke up and found, to my surprise, that I really had slept.


	27. Breakfast With The Thropps

**A/N: I hate my French teacher, I hate designers, I hate fashion…I hate math. I hate whoever the hell invented factoring! I've made Elphaba's great-grandfather how I'd imagine Teddy Roosevelt to have been…large and boisterous, a safari-explorer type of person.**

**Disclaimer: Ce n'est pas a moi ( I like the language…not the teacher nor the project in the language)**

The next day, I woke up first, just as I did every day except that once in the forest. Sleeping anymore than was necessary had always struck me as distinctly futile and useless, and being all too accustomed to feelings of futility and uselessness, I was determined to avoid those feelings as much as was humanly possible. (Damn, what did I have to do to get away from such biased words, invent a new language? For Kumbricia's sake…). So I slipped out of bed and down the hall and bathed and changed, and went back in, fed the twins, woke Fiyero and when I took Fala to bring her downstairs to the breakfast table while Fiyero dressed, I ran into my father and great-grandfather in the hallway.

"Melena?" boomed my great-grandfather.

"Uh, no," I said. "Elphaba."

"He's gone color blind," explained Frex _sotto voce_. But there was less than nothing wrong with my great-grandfather's hearing.

"I am _not,_" he insisted. "It's too dark in this damned house, and don't you tell me this is Elphaba the little dryad, Frexspar you twit, Elphaba's a _girl_. She hasn't got a _baby_."

"Yes, she has," said Frex, "she has two. She's twenty-four."

"Twenty-four? Do you think I'm an idiot? Why, you and Melena are barely-"

"Grandfather, it's been more than ten years since I was last here." I said. "I _am _Elphaba, and this is my daughter Fala. I'm _green_, look close, can't you tell?"

"Hmm." My great-grandfather peered closely at me. "But…then…is the little girl green, too?" he asked, puzzled. I could hear the unspoken words behind his question: _What a shame_.

I ducked my head, biting my lip.

Fiyero's blue-diamonded arm emerged from the door, then his head.

"Uh, Fae?" he yelled, his shirt stuck awkwardly over his face, "can you please help me?"

"You idiot," I said, seeing what he had done. "It's physically impossible to put a shirt on while holding a baby," I said, shutting the door, "Couldn't you see that?"

"I can now. I guess I was just half-asleep." He yawned as if to prove his point.

I took Liir from him and set both twins in their cribs.

"See?"

"Yes…" he smiled, abashed, fixing his shirt.

"Come on now, let's go eat breakfast."

"Have you fed the twins?"

"Yes, I did it while you were asleep," I told him, grinning.

"Damn," he said, "how do people have so much _energy _in the morning?"

…

Downstairs at the breakfast table, I saw my brother for the first time in years. He was fifteen, dark-haired and lithe, with a wiry lean athlete's body and a perpetual smirk. The smirk grew in derision as his bored hazel eyes, mirrors of my own, flicked over Fiyero and the babies.

"Reproduce much?" he asked.

"I liked you better when you couldn't talk," I told him. His eyes lit.

"Finally, someone who appreciates sarcasm," he said. I laughed.

"Darling boy, I _invented _sarcasm."

Fiyero nodded. "You do not want to match wits with her."

"And I suppose you'd know about matching _other _things with her, wouldn't you?" asked Shell.

From the other side of the table, Glinda began to giggle inexplicably and hid her face behind her napkin. Nessarose and the Glikkun dignitary she was entertaining glared. Frex looked rather appalled but tolerant, because it was Shell, who had always gotten away with more (Nessie was the favorite, but Shell was the boy, so his antics were excusable, and without arms how much mischief could Nessa have made?) and my great-grandfather, nominally the one negotiating with said dignitary, looked to be completely asleep, head lolled back on his chair.

Home. There really is no place like it.

Then again, there's no place like Southstairs, either.

"Really, Shell, how crude," I said. "But I don't guess you'd know about that; after all, you only screw the daughters of the bloodiest butchers of Oz, isn't that right?"

He cursed at me in Qua'ati under his breath and I responded in kind, only worse, since I'd been the one to follow Father around on his missions and several had involved going down to the riverbanks where the dockhands, who were anomalies in the normally languid and calm nature of Quadlings, spoke their own vernacular consisting mostly of deliciously awful curses.

"Screw you," said Shell.

"Screw you back," I answered. "What the hell are you even doing besides sleeping with girls before you've even grown a beard?"

At that, remembering what I'd begun to say about Boq in the garden at the end of our first year at Shiz, Glinda began to laugh out loud, and I grinned.

"What?" asked Fiyero.

"Boq, tree limbs, and fans," I replied enigmatically as Glinda laughed even harder. My brother gave us a look.

"Well," he said finally, clapping Fiyero on the back, "good luck, you moron. Picking my sister…I'd shoot myself if I were. Careful, if you get sick looking at her she might kill you."

"My hands'll be full killing you!" I informed him, lunging.

"Ha, you've got a baby!" he taunted. I set Fala in her playpen, but as I turned back around it was only to see Shell grabbing his cap.

"Ta-ta, I'm off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz!" he sang, ducking out the door.

"Is he really?" I asked Frex, who nodded.

"Well, _why?_" I half-yelled. "Does he know enough not to tell him I'm here? Does he know I was in prison? Does he know _anything_?" I asked.

Frex considered it.

"No," he said, "but the Wizard already knows you'll be here. The babies were here."

"Yes, I know," I said, "but still…I mean, is it really a good idea to send _my _brother there?"

"Shell can handle himself quite adeptly," said Frex, and I shuddered. _Adept. Could it be…no. No. _"And he's always managed to avoid…the…things…that plague his sisters."

It was true. He was, firstly, a boy, not a small achievement in this world, unfortunately, of men, _human _men, and secondly, he was neither green nor armless. Where Nessa and I had lived practically all our lives in Quadling Country, educated simply on our own initiative, with our small means, he had lived half of his young life here at Colwen Grounds, living the life of a rich playboy asshole, with everything he wanted. He had no political or social consciousness, he was a dilettante of the worst sort. He was off to see the Wizard and he had no grasp whatsoever of what he was falling into.

Damn him. Innocence is easy to have, easier to lose, and impossible to regain.

As we finally began to eat breakfast in earnest, Glinda kept looking at me, then away, biting her lip as if holding in torrents of giggles.

Finally, I grew fed up. The furtive glances, the small stifled giggles…it was all too much like Shen-Shen and Pfannee and Milla and G_a_linda and our early days at Shiz.

"Glinda!" I said suddenly, hitting the flat of my hand on the table, "What is the matter with you?"

She began giggling in earnest. "Squeak," she said.

"What!" I asked. I was certain I'd heard her wrong.

"Oh, nothing…just something I heard." She said evasively. "That and a lamp falling."

_Oh, Lurline. _I could feel my face darkening and I knew Fiyero's was as well. Nessarose, who after all had been at school with us and knew the patterns of our conversation and our mannerisms when speaking of such things, got the gist and blushed furiously, then glared at the three of us and launched a familiar speech about morality, so familiar in fact that, out of habit, we duly ignored.

"Elphaba," said Glinda, calming now that she'd gotten it out of her system, "would you- I mean, I know you need somewhere to- would you like to stay with me in the Emerald City for a while? I know it's the last place anyone would look."

I looked at Fiyero, who nodded after a moment.

"Yes, thank you," I said, surprised at her empathetic thinking.

"Good," Glinda said, relieved. "Then we should probably leave-"

She was cut off by Shell running back in, out of breath, interrupting Nessarose's conversation with the dignitary and even my great-grandfather's thick slumber,

"Sis," he said, addressing me, "Nes, Dad- the Wizard and a bunch of Forcers are here."

"Now," finished Glinda.


	28. Carriages and Coffee

**A/N: Sorry, it really _has _been awhile, hasn't it? Oh, well. I finally got a decent idea and here it is. It incorporates what Fiyero saw from the coffee shop window in the book into it, with a little bit added. **

**Disclaimer: It's Gregory Maguire's, not mine. **

"Oh, shit," I said, getting up so fast I knocked over my chair. "Shit." I grabbed Fala from her playpen and Fiyero grabbed Liir.

"Jump in the back of my carriage, it's in the carriage house, you can't miss it," hissed Glinda in a low voice. "I'll be there as soon as we take care of this." Frex was already running for the door.

"Go!" he yelled.

We did. We dashed out through the back door and into the carriage house where we found what could only be Glinda's carriage, festooned as it was with jewels.

Diamonds stained pink; I guessed her old saying from Shiz about traveling modestly and letting the "novel world" serve as one's accessory had fallen to the wayside. Fiyero and I, still holding the twins, covered ourselves quickly with the plentiful blankets lying on the floor of the carriage. We huddled together, the four of us, Fiyero and I waiting in frozen fear. And I prayed, yes, me, to anyone or anything that might be listening. _Don't take them away from me again. I might do something stupid. Please, don't. I don't know how I could deal with it, again. _

But after a moment of this, Fiyero spoke.

"Fae," he said, hesitantly, "are you- when we go to Glinda's, in the city, are you going to rejoin the resistance?"

I hadn't thought of the resistance in months, funnily enough; I'd been too busy getting out of the trouble my membership had gotten us into.

I looked at Fala and Liir, sleeping innocently, and knew my answer.

"Yes," I said. "My children should live in a free land, and they _will_." Fiyero smiled and kissed me over the babies' sleeping heads.

"I was- I was thinking," he said. "That maybe I-I-" he paused, sounding embarrassed.

"What?" I prodded as gently as I could.

"I wondered if maybe I could help, too," he said. "I've changed. I _care _now, I'm not separate from it anymore, Fae, I'm not separate from _you_ anymore, either." He looked at me deeply, measuringly. "There's a story I never told you," he said, and then he did.

"One day," said Fiyero, "I went out for coffee in a place where I usually sat in an outdoor garden, but the garden was closed. The owner had opened up his parlor, with a window with a view of the courtyard of the building next door, a school."

"But the school, part of it anyhow, had been appropriated by the Gale Force. One of them, a young blond man, led out some Gillikinese men, some Quadlings, and some Smallish Red Bears- a family of them, a mother, a father, and their cub, I'd guess."

He paused. One of my hands went instinctively to my abdomen, as it had so many times when I was pregnant, and still did sometimes, at night, when I dreamt of prison. The other hand clutched Fiyero's tighter, our joined wrists a shield over Fala's and Liir's small bodies.

"The cub," Fiyero went on, "was playing. The Quadlings were dancing, some kind of ritual dance, it looked like-"

Residual memories welled up; sinewy, shadowy forms, lyrical, languid movements, swaying, gentle, hips; the small peaked face of a little green girl peering out of her doorway, into the night and the wet summer air and the firelight outside.

"-and the Gillikinese men smoked. The Forcer issued some order, and something happened with the Bears. They didn't line up with the others. And then the soldier, he-"

Fiyero paused, breathing deep the powdery scent of our own children.

"Then he took his cudgel and smashed in the Bear cub's skull, right in front of his parents."

"Oh, sweet Lurline," I breathed. A year ago, less, in fact, the story would have scarcely made me wince. _See_, I would have said, _It's not all sunshine and roses out there, Fiyero. Things are done, regrettable things sometimes, to stop cruelties like that, but that's by no means the worst of it. Oh, no. And it's complacent people like you who let it. Not that I want you to join up, not that I want you to come with me on midnight raids and dynamite bridges, not that I need you to care or care if you do, but just so you know. _

A year ago, I would have been lying, and not even I would have known it. But I had changed, we both had. I had given myself, not just the physical self, but the rest of me, too, to Fiyero, and he to me. In prison, especially, it was impossible to be the separate beings we had pushed ourselves into before. So many barriers fell there.

Then there were the babies. I didn't want them, in a way, to be what had changed me. To be changed by motherhood was such a damn ordinary thing to have done.

But I had been. And it was a good thing; I didn't walk around like an unexploded Molotov cocktail waiting to get close enough to a fire all the time anymore. Then, though, a realization about what Fiyero had told me broke through my introspection.

"That coffee shop," I said. "By the school…do you know why the garden was closed?"

"Yes," said Fiyero, surprised by the question. "Part of the wall was blown up. Someone had tried to get the prisoners out, it looked like. Why?"

A smile spread across my face.

"I was there," I said. After a moment, what I had said hit him, and, in wonderment at the way we were fitted so carefully into one another's lives, we realized at once how we'd fooled ourselves that we were so separate then, but we were each other's epiphany, really, each other's saving grace.

And we slipped beneath the blankets and the babies' feet, and gave ourselves to each other all over again, in the most wonderful way possible.


	29. Lost and Found

**A/N: It's been a while, hasn't it? Ah, well, blame finals. They're still not over, but I finished World History very early and so got to finish writing this. Also, my cat is in this story because she's that awesome. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine.**

After a few days of traveling, we arrived at Glinda's house in the city.

"Oh, dear," she said. "I _do_ wonder what Sir Chuffrey is going to say."

"Probably, 'Quick, call the Gale Force!'" I said. "But they're still in Munchkinland, looking for us."

"Not all of them," said Fiyero.

"Well, I _know_ that," I said. "But the ones here think we're there, too."

"Hm," he said. "I hope so."

…

Glinda was right, her husband was alarmed, but she convinced him that we were harmless.

"Elphie's less a witch than I am, dear," she'd said, and it was true. I had little instruction andno natural talent at sorcery, Madame Morrible had said so.

_Morrible is a liar. Remember what you saw- red balloon death and blood, in the shiny silver surface of the glass under the dock under the moon bright moon- _

But as we stayed there, I began to lose myself in simplicity. In walking around the garden, absently plucking flowers, in laughing, too easily, laughter unearned, when Fiyero swung his arm around my neck and pulled me close, in playing stupid games with the babies, who, in all fairness, seemed to like them no more than I did, in watching Glinda do the same.

It was easy, too easy, to slip into not caring.

And so, as fall slipped into winter, I didn't care. And I was a different person, one I didn't like at all. But I didn't know how to get myself back to myself.

One day, as Lurlinemas grew closer, Glinda decided it was sufficiently sleety and foggy enough so as to take me out, unnoticed. Heavily swathed in black cloaks, I made a hilarious picture when placed beside Glinda, shorter and bustling in her blue taffeta dress and matching cloak. And shoes, which I _told _her would get ruined because they were stupid and impractical. But she didn't listen. No one did. No one ever had.

But it was this day that I rediscovered myself.

Outside yet another of the fancy shops of the Emerald City, a sudden, sharp, noise cut into my rant about how bored I was. A Gale Forcer grabbed what must have been a Cat and slammed her several times into a wall, but it might as well have been me he was slamming.

It woke. me. up. I wrenched my arm out of Glinda's grip and stalked over to the guard, whom I grabbed by the collar and glared at.

"What the _hell _do you think you're doing?" I hissed. His eyes went wide in fear and recognition.

"But you're-you're-_her-_"

"Damn straight."

I looked at the Cat out of the corner of my eye. She was definitely too injured to move. With a speed I didn't know I still had, I scooped the Animal up, gave the guard a _look_, and disappeared down an alleyway.

After waiting a few minutes, I ducked out another and grabbed a shocked Glinda, then yanked her back to where our coach-and-four was waiting, climbed in, pulling her, and closed all the window curtains.

"Elphaba," she said finally, "are you _mad_?"

"Maybe," I said, feeling a strange urge to laugh. "I'm _me, _at least."

"You _are_ mad!" said Glinda.

"Probably," I agreed. I turned to the Cat I was holding. "Are you all right?" I asked.

"I will be," she said. "I'm Jenna."

"Elphaba," I replied, "and this sputtering poufy one is Glinda."

"What did you do, to have them beat you up like that?" asked Glinda. Jenna and I looked at her incredulously.

"Glinda," I said patiently. "What have we talked about?"

"Um…"

"Never mind." I sighed. "Just forget it."

…

When we arrived back at the house, Chuffrey took one look at Jenna and I and sighed.

"What the _hell _did you do?" he demanded.

"Oh, get off of it. _I _didn't beat anyone up," I said. "_I _just scared someone."

"She has that effect on people," Glinda chimed in.

I glared at her. "Thank you for that, Glinda."

"You're welcome," she said, beaming. Sarcasm is _so_ lost on her.

"What did she do?" Chuffrey asked, ignoring me.

"I scared a guard and made him quit beating up Jenna here," I said. "Nothing more and nothing less."

Chuffrey glared at me. "Witch," he said under his breath.

"We've _been _over this, dear," said Glinda.

"Honestly," I said to no one in particular. "I don't know where people _get _that idea."

"Propaganda," suggested Fiyero, walking into the room with the twins. I took Liir and rocked him gently.

"Mm. Probably," I agreed.

"Who're you?" asked Fiyero of Jenna, whom he had just noticed.

"Fiyero, meet Jenna," I said. "Jenna, this dear impolite dolt is my husband, Fiyero."

"_Me_, impolite, Fae? _You're _the one-"

"Well, I may be absolutely appalling in parlors, Fiyero, but at least I can manage an introduction when it's required of me," I countered.

Jenna looked a bit shell-shocked.

"Did he just call you Fae?" she asked. "_That _Fae?"

I smiled. _Of course. _Maybe, I thought, there was an Unnamed God, after all.

"Yes," I said. "That Fae."


	30. Liir

**A/N: _Look_, people, the reviews are getting shabby! If I can write the story, you can review it. Especially if I can write it during finals! And for Lillian Townsend...SQUEAK! **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

_You know, it was strange. When we were children, I'd liked Shell. He was a beautiful child- gleaming dark brown hair the color of coffee, shining round grey eyes that sparkled like the pebbles at the bottom of a river, his light skin that tanned in summer. Normal skin. His chubby baby legs and arms, yes, arms, his tiny wiggling fingers. I remember Nessarose staring at them when she thought no one was looking, entranced. _

_We're all damaged, in our family. I'm green and antisocial, Nessie's armless and a budding tyrant, Shell- he's whole, on the outside, but he acts like a bastard and fills his life with empty things. He never had a mother. Nessa never had a lover. Me- it's funny, really- I'm more whole than they are, inside. I have a husband and children and a best friend. I had our mother longest. My real father may be the biggest asshole ever to walk the planet, but I think Frex even likes me now. _

_I remember being fifteen. I decided, then, to be just a bitch back to everyone who hated me. I remember crying myself to sleep nights and waking up with my face numb, because I had the same feelings everyone else my age did but the knowledge that no one would ever love me pressed up against my heart and squeezed it. At least, in Quadling Country, no one was mean to me. The younger children stared sometimes but they didn't mind me. A lot of them actually liked me. The adults were used to me, all of Ovvels was. I was an oddity, but by then, I was a familiar oddity at least, and one known to stand up for them. _

_I hadn't remembered this before. I was sixteen. It was the year before I went up to Shiz. Another troop of the Wizard's cruel soldiers searching for rubies had come sowing destruction as they went. I had begun to slowly realize what was really going on there- genocide- and I did _not _like it. One day walking home from the market I saw a young soldier playing in the street with Quadling children- the cousins and siblings and friends of the ones he had probably killed the day before. I lost it. I marched up to him and started screaming in his face. _

"_What is WRONG with you!" I cried. "How can you DO that? Kill people, yes, people, and then play with their friends and relatives, whose families you killed yesterday, and who themselves you might kill tomorrow? How can you do it!" _

_He looked at me, strangely. Strangely familiar. Strange…_

"_Because," he said, "I don't think about it. I don't think, not anymore. I was never very good at it in the first place, but since…since…well, anyway, I just don't." _

_Now, I realize that although I knew all the other soldiers' faces, I had never seen that one before. _

_And I never saw him again. _

…

Jenna was a member of the Resistance, of course. And she led me back to them. And I told Fiyero the missions. I was a changed person, now, and so was he. There were so many less barriers between us. I didn't have to hide myself anymore.

My life had a purpose again. I blew up bridges and empty headquarters and stores of arms, but I didn't kill anyone. I wasn't sure if I still could. And besides- I was harboring my anger, feeding the fire but keeping it low, until I could unleash all of it on the Wizard.

I thought I was content. But I kept dreaming about that strange soldier.

One day, when I was feeding Liir, I looked down at him and it was as if the soldier's face was superimposed over his. They did look alike, I thought. The same hair and eyes and skin. But- that's impossible. He can't be that soldier. That soldier is older than I am, and Liir is my son.

And yet- and yet-

But there it was again. Liir was _my _son. He would never participate in a genocide. He would never be a soldier for the Wizard. I would raise him better than _that_, for Lurline's sake! I was never _that _inept at anything. I put it out of my mind and went back to writing an article for a subversive newspaper.

That night, I dreamed a different dream. Well…sort of. I dreamed Fiyero had died and Liir was my only child, Fala wasn't there, and I was in a coma and all sorts of strange things.

And Liir did become a soldier. In Quadling Country. He burned a city full of civilians.

Fiyero really _was _my better half, I thought, if he keeps me from going half insane and my son from killing children. Thank God I'd run home that night instead of walked. If I'd walked, lingering in my thoughts and self-pity and wallowing in my failure- he would have been killed, there or in Southstairs. Without me there, too, to torture, he wasn't worth much to them alive.

"Fae," said Fiyero, his eyes flickering open, "what are you doing up?"

"I had a dream," I said, "about what could have happened if you died that night." He looked at me.

"Thank you for interrupting them."

"Thank you for being you."

"Yeah, that too."

We ducked under the covers and kissed, and a lot more.

"You know what'd be funny," I said, after, "is if Chuffrey knocked on the wall and told us to keep it down."

Fiyero snorted. "That'd be hilarious," he said. "Lurline knows, they're not loud at all. You wouldn't even think-"

We both paused, sobered. We thought about ourselves and our love and then about Glinda and Chuffrey.

"Who would have ever guessed," I whispered, "that I would end up happier than she?"

Fiyero looked at me. "Me," he said. "You're steadier and smarter about things and you know what's underneath the surface."

I couldn't help but laugh at that one.

"That I most certainly do," I said. And we decided to learn it all over again.


	31. Glinda

**A/N: Finally, I update! The Glinda things are for Kennedy Leigh Morgan. Thanks to Molly for the hilarity! (and Kari and Caity for the Glinda Does the Teen Help Hotline thing we made up last night! You guys rock! Even if you won't read this!) **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

I awoke contented and whole in Fiyero's arms. Lightly, as usual, I slipped out of them and walked quietly down the hall, yawning, to the bathroom. But unlike usual, I found Glinda there, crying.

"Glinda!" I exclaimed, shocked. "What's wrong?"

"I…I…I'm a bad person!" she told me, crying harder. I came all the way into the bathroom and shut the door.

"Why?" I asked, never one to make assurances blindly.

"Because," she told me, "I'm having an affair." She started sobbing even more.

"Glinda, is Fiyero a bad person?" I asked her.

"No! Why would you ask me that?" she cried.

"Oh, come _on_, Glinda, you're not _that _blonde!" I told her. A funny look came over her face.

"Oh," she said. "I see."

"It doesn't make you a bad person," I told her. "There are mitigating circumstances."

"Mi-ti-uh what?" she asked.

I sighed. "Never mind. It just means…extenuating circumstances?"

She shook her head.

"Um…there's a special situation."

"Oh," she nodded. "Yes."

"You didn't really marry Chuffrey for love, did you?" I asked her. She shook her blonde curls fiercely.

"No. Not really. He asked me because he was expected to marry, I said yes because I _had _to marry and at least he wasn't as aw_ful_ as Avaric, even if Av was handsomer."

I smiled at that and couldn't help but think; _Our little Glinda is growing up!_

But she was, she really was.

"Well, who is it then?" I asked her.

"Who's what?" she asked. I sighed. Honestly, she is the most easily distracted person I know, and considering Fiyero's stupidly maleness, that's saying quite a bit.

"Who are you having an affair with, Glinda?"

"Oh." A faint smile drifted across her face. "I can't tell you."

"And why not?" I demanded. I didn't actually care to know the particulars of Glinda's sex life all that much, but now it was a question of trust. "Do you think I'd tell someone? I wouldn't do that, Glinda."

"No," she said. "I mean I really can't."

"Why the hell not? Do you not know his name?"

"Not his name, per se," she said. A sick feeling began to rise in my stomach.

"Glinda," I said, "look at me. Is he…involved…in the same things I am?"

"Not really," said Glinda. "Not at all. Kind of the oppos-" she covered her mouth with her hand. "Oops."

"Glinda," I said, keeping my voice carefully and tightly controlled, "are you having an affair with a _spy for the Wizard_!"

She looked scared.

"Yes," she muttered meekly. I flew from my seat on the floor and began to pace and rant in Qua'ati.

"Elphie," Glinda looked even more frightened. "Elphie, is that a spell?"

"No, it's just Qua'ati, calm down." I sat back down beside her and grabbed her hands. "Glinda. Don't you realize how dangerous this is? What if you let slip something about me, or Fiyero, or the children, or something I'm doing? And besides that, these people are _evil_, Glinda, they have an enormous capacity for hatred and de-de-humanization, damnit, they've even biased the language for it!"

"No!" Glinda cried fiercely. "He's not like that Elphie! I love him, and he loves me, and he _doesn't _hate!"

"Then how the _hell_ can he do what they all do?" I yelled back.

"I don't know! He doesn't want to, he just does! He doesn't think about it; he can't. Can't you understand that?"

"_Because," he said, "I don't think about it. I don't think, not anymore. I was never very good at it in the first place, but since…since…well, anyway, I just don't." _

Liir, the young soldier of my past and my dream. Liir, my son with the awful alternate future. Liir, whose life was decided when I chose to run and not to walk.

Yes, I could.

"He loves me, he loves me, he's good and he loves me and he's good and he loves me and I love him and I'm pregnant!" sobbed Glinda, rocking back and forth.

"Oh, sweet Lurline," I said when I heard her mutter the last. "Oh, Glinda, are you really?"

"Yes," she muttered petulantly. "I suppose you're going to tell me something bad about that too."

"No…I won't, despite the fact that I _could_, given that my only experience with pregnancy was in prison."

She looked up through tears.

"Oh, Elphie, what are we going to do?"

_We_ could have meant her and her despicable lover, but somehow I knew it didn't.

"Well," I said, "I think we should start with me meeting this…this…'good' palace spy."


	32. Once A Spy

**A/N: Another update in between being Maria and a hat rack…and an angry villager who does not mean one word of 'Mob Song!' Seriously, do all villagers like death parties or something? But anyway. I digress. My sister dumped a bucket of soapy water on me when we were washing the car…grr…**

**Disclaimer: Wicked's not mine and neither is Beauty and the Beast nor is the Sound of Music.**

Glinda obeyed. But first, I did have to allow her to powder my face and neck, which made me look slightly ill. Glinda found darker powder and rouge and applied them. I stared into her ornate looking glass in shock. With my gloves on, I looked…normal.

And to my profound shock, I preferred my strange greenness.

"Come on, then," said Glinda. "I can't wait to show you off!"

"Glinda!" I said, "Name!"

"Aelphaba's not uncommon," she said. "And the Resistance knows you as Fae."

"Fabala," I said, "That's a common derivative, but I don't know…"

"All right," said Glinda, "Calm down."

"_Calm down_! I, the infamous Resistance member who practically assaulted a Gale Forcer not two days ago, am going to see a Palace spy and you tell me to _calm down!_"

"Would a different name help?"

I sighed and stared at the strange face in the mirror.

"Ava, then." I suggested. "Fabala is too risky."

"Fine," said Glinda, "let's go."

…

She led me to a flat in a nice part of town.

"It would appear that the other side comes with benefits," I remarked. "Evil has its price."

Glinda gave me her darkest look.

"When we go in there, I beg of you, don't speak," she said without mirth.

She knocked on the door. A dark-haired man in his late twenties or early thirties opened the door and immediately enveloped Glinda in a passionate embrace.

I cleared my throat. The man pulled away and looked up.

"Hi," I said. "I'm El- Lia."

_Damn! How could I have slipped like that? I'm trained not to do that! I've given false names with less notice! _

The man gave me a studied look as he ushered us into his flat.

"You look…familiar."

"That's funny, I'm usually so forgettable. You know, such a boring complexion," I answered, giving Glinda a look.

The man didn't look at me. He grabbed Glinda and pulled her off to the side.

"Why did you bring her here?" I heard him hiss. "You _know _I can't-"

"Calm down. Lia won't blow your cover."

_But _Elphaba_ just might blow your head off_, I thought.

"Are you positive?"

I thought of a double entendre for that and wondered if he knew about Glinda's condition.

"I've known her since we were seventeen. She's- _very_ good at keeping things hidden. And she doesn't even know your last name."

"Or your first," I interrupted. He turned to me.

"Magellus," he said.

"Is that your real name?"

"Is Lia yours, Miss El-?"

"Yes," I said staunchly.

"Oh, really?" he asked, approaching me. "And is that your real skin color, too, _Fae_?" In a too-swift movement, he had me up against the wall and he was twisting my arm.

"Gel!" Glinda cried. "Please!"

"Shut up!" he yelled, shoving her backwards.

"But," she sobbed, "I love you!"

"Well I don't love you! So just shut the hell up and you won't have to go to Southstairs with your friend!"

"You…used me?" gasped Glinda.

"I knew you knew her," he told Glinda. "It was an assignment." He turned back to me, forced me closer to the wall.

"You bitch," he said, shoving me harder into the wall. He began to search me, hands crawling like bugs between my legs.

"You- _bastard_!" I kicked out blindly, catching him in the crotch with my boot heel. "Fuck you!" I screamed at him, whirling around and kicking him hard in the chin. I kicked him again, taking extensive pleasure in the sound of his nose smashing. "Go to hell, you asshole," I said, grabbing a still-shocked Glinda by the wrist. "I hope you have fun sleeping nights knowing you contributed to genocide and exploited a rape victim and a pregnant woman." He glared at me and clutched his bloody nose as I swept out of the room, with Glinda behind me.

…

"Elphaba," said Glinda, as we walked back, "should we…move?"

"No," I said. "Sir Chuffrey _does _have influence. Or money, at any rate, which amounts to the same thing. The Wizard won't dare come after you."

"What about you?"

"For one thing, I can handle it. For another, picture this: _Beloved Wizard Illegitimately Fathered Wicked Witch!_"

"The Wizard controls the press, Elphie."

"Ah, so you _have _learned something," I said, pleased. "But there are…ways… of releasing information."

"Do I want to know?" asked Glinda.

I cocked my head. "Probably not."


	33. Resist At All Costs

**A/N: Come on you guys, review! Please? For the sake of my self-esteem and so that whenever my sister does a "Nessarose's special name" (cough, bitch of the east, cough cough) I don't have to go around singing viciously and pointedly, "No sister acts ashamed!" constantly to make myself feel better. Bleck. She's evil. But anyway. Story now. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

When we approached Glinda's house, I saw Fiyero standing in the yard, talking to Chuffrey, and I ran to him immediately and grabbed him in a passionate embrace. Chuffrey turned away, embarrassed.

"Elphaba," said Fiyero, a bit taken aback at my demonstrativeness, "what…?"

"Thank you," I whispered into his neck.

"For what?" he asked, bewildered.

"Being you."

"Uh…you're welcome?" He realized something was the matter, though, and gently led me over out of Chuffrey's earshot.

"Fae," he said, "Fae, what happened?"

"I-" I began. I shot a glance at Chuffrey. "Come upstairs and I'll tell you." I motioned to Glinda to come with us, and she did.

…

"I had an affair," said Glinda, "With a palace spy."

"You did _what_? With _who_?" asked Fiyero in disbelief.

"And Elphaba found out and made me take her to his flat, but-" Glinda's voice warbled, but she sallied on bravely- "but he didn't really love me. He was just using me to capture Elphaba-"

"And he almost did," I said, voice thick with disgust. "That _bastard_ tried to search me- like those guards- but I kicked him in the groin, then twice in the face, and we ran."

Fiyero sat in stony silence for a moment.

"I'm going to kill him," he said finally.

"Don't worry, he won't be walking for a while, and he may not want to go out in public anyway, I smashed his face up pretty good," I said cheerfully.

"I'm not joking, Elphaba," said Fiyero.

I quieted. "I know," I said. "But I've got a damn sight better of a chance at killing someone than you do, Fiyero."

"Fae!"

"What? You think that just because I'm a woman I can't fight my own battles when a man touches me? Because I think I did a damn good job of it this time!" I was overreacting, and I knew it. Glinda slipped quietly out of the room, wisely.

He came closer, slowly, and I let him enfold me.

"That's not what I meant," he said.

"I know. I know it's not. I'm sorry, I'm just…"

"Ssh, Fae," he said, stroking my hair gently, "I know."

And the beauty of it was, we did know.

…

The next day, I brought Fiyero with me to a Resistance meeting for the first time.

"This is Yero," I said. "I can vouch with absolute certainty for his trustworthiness."

"Are the two of you…involved?" asked the Leader, Eagle (his codename even though he was decidedly human. I thought.). I gave the dark space from whence his voice came a glare.

"Yes," I said tightly. "We're married, if you _must _know."

"Would you kill him for our cause?"

The question was abrupt, as I had known it would be. It was Eagle's way. I answered him calmly and steadily.

"No."

I could hear murmuring around me. "Oh, _shut _up," I said. "Our cause is nothing without passion and emotion."

I turned back to face where I knew Eagle was standing. "I won't need to kill him. Ever. But in any case, I am a far more stable person because of him. I- how did I phrase it?- I don't walk around like an unexploded Molotov cocktail next to a match anymore."

"That's all very well, but answer me this: If saving his life would cause the failure of a mission, would you save him?"

"Yes."

"You are one of our most talented agents, Fae. I wouldn't want to see you compromised."

"I am _not _compromised. And if I'm so damn talented, don't you think I can save him _and _a mission? And don't you think I have good judgment?"

I could feel his eyes burning into me even though I knew he couldn't see me.

"To the first, possibly. To the second, no. You do not have good judgment, and I see your Yero has not so calmed you that you didn't just lash out at me with uncontrolled anger."

I flushed. "I'm sorry."

"Use your anger, Fae, do not be used by it." Eagle sighed audibly. "I will allow it, for now. But it will be taken into consideration."

I bit back the angry response boiling up from the back of my throat- _You don't _allow _it. I'll quit, you asshole, you're just as bad as the Wizard- _and nodded. Then I remembered he couldn't see me. "Yes, Eagle," I said, contenting myself with allowing it to sound a bit shirty.

"Now," he said, "we have another new recruit. Magellus-"

"Get him out, _now_!" I screamed.

"Fae, _what_?" I heard someone say.

"He's a spy!" I yelled.


	34. He Did NOT Just Say That

**A/N: Another update! There's a weird jump in time here, but I had to do it to make the story work. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

It is extraordinarily hard to see in the dark. The moment after I screamed, chaos ensued as Magellus ran smack into me.

"You'll be sorry," he growled into my face. I could just barely see his flattened noise and the accompanying purple bruising.

"Nice face," I said. He cursed and disappeared.

"It's not safe to meet here," said Eagle after a moment. "Next time, come to our alternate place and we'll begin planning the spring campaign."

We dispersed slowly, in small individual fragments, into the world.

…

Months passed quickly. Glinda told Chuffrey the child was his, and he believed her. Nearly exactly nine months later, I was teaching Fala and Liir to walk in the back garden when Glinda, huge as a barge, appeared in the doorway.

"Elphaba," she said, panicking, "I think it might be happening!"

For all her sophistication in womanly manners and all my ignorance, I realized that I had more experience in this matter. Not only was I a mother, of course (but even now, thirteen months into it, the idea still shocked me)- but also Glinda had no siblings, as I did, and had grown up in a town that included doctors and midwives. She had never seen a baby born, I would bet, as I had. I might even have assisted at births, in Ovvels, if not for my sin of skin color. Under ordinary circumstances, I did not frighten the denizens of Ovvels, but their acceptance did not extend so far as to risk me in the birthing room.

But there was no time for reminiscing.

"Fiyero," I called quickly, hoisting little Fala onto my hip. She smiled and pulled a lock of my hair painfully out of its braid. I turned to chide her, but her bright blue eyes sparkled irresistibly. She cocked her dark head and furrowed her eyebrows.

"Fi_yero_!" I yelled again. Glinda moaned and clutched at her lower back.

"Oh, yes, it's definitely happening," she groaned.

Fiyero came running outside with a spatula in his hand. He had recently discovered that he was actually good at cooking, a relief to all considering that Glinda burned toast and simmering vegetables was my limit. That and I routinely buried the meat stores. Well, one can never be sure these days!

"What is it, Fae?" asked Fiyero.

"Glinda's having her baby," I said without prelude. "I need you to watch the twins."

Fala shook her head and clamped her arms around my neck. The message was clear: she was going with me. I sighed. I was not about to argue with a one-year-old who didn't even speak yet. "Liir, then, unless he wants to go too?" The boy made a little face and shook his head.

Fiyero grinned at Fala. "Like mother, like daughter," he said. "Stubborn as hell." Fala gave him a dirty look. Although neither of them spoke yet, they seemed to have their own methods of communication.

"Come on, then," I said, supporting Glinda with one hand. "You know," I said to Fala, "if you'd deigned to try walking this morning, this would be a lot easier."

Glinda managed a laugh. "Ow," she said a moment later. "Elphie, it hurts."

"Yes, Glinda, childbirth generally does that."

"You could try being a little sympathetic!"

I ignored her suggestion and led her into her bedroom. She lied down immediately on her bed.

"You can walk, if you want," I said.

"No thanks, I'm good," she replied.

"Should I go get Chuffrey?" I asked.

"No- ow! Could you go get Magellus so I can kill him?" she asked hopefully.

"Not right now. Maybe later," I said.

…

_Later…_

"Damnit Elphaba! Ow!" Glinda shrieked.

"What? I didn't do it!" I yelled back.

"Don't you know what to do?"

"The view was a little different last time!" I groaned. "Hang on." I stuck my head out the window. "Fiyero!"

"What?" he yelled back.

"Get a midwife!"

"You mean you can't do it, Fae?"

I sighed. "Darling Yero, I will cut vegetables. I will cook them. I may even bake a pie. But that is firmly the extent of my domestic capabilities."

"And it doesn't include delivering a baby?"

"If I had something to throw at you, Yero, I would most certainly use it."

He laughed at me as I shut the window, but fifteen minutes later there was a midwife in the room. And she appeared to share those Quadling misgivings about me.

"Go on now, get out," she shooed me and the attentive Fala.

"No!" called out Glinda. "I want Elphie to stay!"

The midwife muttered something about crazy pregnant women under her breath and acquiesced. I moved to Glinda's side, holding Fala. Fala tugged at my hair.

"What, Fala?" I asked. She pointed out the window. I looked and sucked in my breath.

_Magellus. _

"Evil, Mama," said Fala, her first words.

Memories flooded me of the night I had learned to speak.

Madame Morrible was a liar, I saw clearly now. I _did _have a natural talent at sorcery. I _was _a witch.

"What is it? What's wrong?" asked Glinda.

"Nothing," I said, "Fala just saw a bird."

Fala gave me a look and shook her head fiercely.

"I _know_," I hissed at her. To Glinda, I said, "I have to go to the bathroom," and ran out of the room.

"Fiyero," I said, nearly running into him and Liir in the front hall, "Magellus is outside, across the street."

"Can I kill him?" Fiyero requested.

"You can _help_."

Just then, the bell rang.

"Oh, _what_ now?" I cried and went to answer it, Fiyero at my heels.

It was Magellus.

"Hello, Fae," he said, smirking.

"Oh, go to hell."

He looked at Fala, in my arms, and laughed cruelly.

"Someone actually _fucked _with you? What was he, blind?"

Fiyero set Liir down and came forward, practically growling.

"Actually, I have 20/20 vision and damn good aim, too," said Fiyero, and punched Magellus. His already crooked nose, courtesy of me, cracked again. The space around it bloomed purple and blood flowed copiously down his face. I let Fala down and she scrambled to Liir's side.

Magellus aimed a punch at me, but I grabbed his wrist and twisted it. It cracked sickeningly and he howled.

Suddenly, Glinda appeared a the top of the stairs, moving slowly and laboriously, an infant nestled in her arm. She glared imperiously at Magellus.

"What do you want?" she asked.

He glared back. "My child."


	35. Don't Mess With Elphaba

**A/N: I'm having a bit of writer's block. But I'll just try winging this chapter. I am so bored…I have been sitting here watching Judging Amy, Law and Order, and now Charmed for four hours. Maybe the fact that I got home from rehearsal past midnight last night and then had to get my stupid hair ready for stupid dress rehearsal until _two o' clock in the morning _has something to do with my deadness. Also, I'm using regular months in this story because I don't want to go mathematically figure out the equivalents, _plus _I'm too lazy to go downstairs and find our Oz books and look them up. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

"Dream on, you bastard!" I said as Glinda withdrew in fear. Sir Chuffrey appeared around a corner.

"What the devil in hell is going on around here?" he yelled. "Who's this?"

Magellus got a positively demonic look on his face. "I am-"

"Leaving. Now," I said. "Either this house or this world, I'm happy with either one." Magellus aimed a kick at my head. I grabbed his ankle and twisted easily, and he went flying through the air and landed hard on the ground. Fiyero gave me an appreciative look. "I _told _you," I said. I turned to Chuffrey. "Go help Glinda, he's after the baby." He did as I said.

Magellus began to pull himself to his feet. "But which baby?" he asked, face twisting. My gaze flew sideways across the room. _Fala and Liir. _

"Damn you to hell!" I screamed, and flew at him, knocking him to the ground and clawing at him.

Suddenly, the air around us began to crackle with electricity and energy. Fiyero gasped.

"Fae," he said, "I thought you'd said you weren't-"

"I did," I responded, gritting my teeth. "But I've been taught to press my advantages." I closed my eyes and tried to focus. I slowly opened my eyes and Magellus froze.

"Well then," I said.

"Are you going to kill him?" asked Fiyero. I looked down at him.

"No," I said, "I'm not."

…

I flew the broom up outside the window with difficulty, balancing the unconscious Magellus behind me. I dipped and wove closer, until I had enough leverage to kick in the window. I alighted gracefully on the desk in front of my biological father and let Magellus flop unceremoniously onto the floor.

"Hello, Daddy dearest," I said. I was clearly in a bad mood and with good reason. "I've brought you your spy."

"What- what?" gasped the Wizard. "Elphaba?"

"No, your other green estranged daughter, you moron."

"What are you doing here?"

I jumped off the desk. "I am delivering your spy. Keep him out of my life and out of my friends' lives and I won't kill him right now."

He looked me over. "You don't have a weapon." I laughed raucously.

"I no longer need one. It would appear, my dear father, that yet another side effect of your fathering me is that I do actually have magical powers, unlike your _friend _Madame Morrible told me. Was she lying, or did she just want to keep me from using these powers?"

The Wizard looked shocked. "You-"

"It would appear that propaganda has a tendency to turn around and bite you in the ass." He was regaining himself. He stood and slapped me.

"Any daughter of mine that talks that way-"

"Oh, _shut _up!" I slapped him back. "I've _told _you, that beyond the complete and utter ridiculousness of that action, any family obligation here died before it was born, all right? So don't even go there."

Electricity was crackling through the air again. I forced the energy outward, from both hands in both directions. It slammed through each wall.

"_Wow_," I whispered. _I am _liking_ this development_, I thought. I turned back to the Wizard. "Keep him away, stay away, and I won't have to explode this entire Palace."

Of course, I couldn't do that- well, not with these powers, with a sufficient amount of explosives I could- but he didn't need to know that. I turned on my heel, stepped on Magellus for good measure, jumped on the broom and leapt from the windowsill into the air.

…

"You should've killed him," said Glinda later. I was sitting in her room playing with the twins while she fed her daughter Ariana, Fiyero made lunch, and Chuffrey went God-knows-where to do God-knows what.

"Well, he's not worth it. And besides that, maybe the Wizard will do our dirty work for us. After all, Magellus blew his cover _majorly_, and he failed in all three attempts against me and the Resistance. And the more blood on the Wizard's hands, the more people will hate him when they finally _wake up _and realize what he's doing!"

"What do you mean, 'not worth it?'" asked Glinda, ignoring my subsequent tirade. "You don't believe in the soul, so what's the problem?"

"Taking life isn't something you do _lightly_, Glinda," I said. I looked down at my lap. "And besides," I said, "Maybe- maybe I do believe- in the soul."

"Ooh, if Nessie could hear you now!" squealed Glinda. Baby Ariana cooed.

"No, no! I'll never tell Nessa or our- her- father! They'll give themselves credit for it, but it's they who destroyed my faith in the first place! And besides, my ideas right now are loose and ill-formed, and hardly conventional." I paused. "And- oh, thank you, Fala, that's _lovely_- I've made such a fuss about _not _believing, I'd feel like I was- giving in- if I changed my mind- and _told _them about it. And I _don't _give in."

I looked at the mushy, regurgitated cookie Fala had handed me.

"Here, Glinda," I said, dropping it into her palm. "Congratulations."

"Ellphiiie!" Glinda shrieked. "Come on now, that's not fair!"

Fala and Liir giggled. Ariana cooed happily again.

"_They _think it's fair," I replied.

Fiyero came upstairs and knocked on the open door, eyes firmly covered.

"Is it safe?" he asked. Glinda threw the cookie at him. "Is that a _no_?"

"It's an indignant yes," I responded. He uncovered his eyes and came in.

"Ew, what's this?" he asked, pulling Fala's mushy cookie off of his shirt.

"A present from your daughter," I said.

"Oh, lovely."

"That's what I said."

Fala laughed.

"See," I said, "_She _is a smart child. She doesn't get offended like most children do."

Fala tugged on my shirt. "Yes, Fala?" I said.

"Liir hungwy," she told me. Liir nodded. It was obvious that he understood, but Fala always spoke for him. It was as if she could read his mind.


	36. Questions

**A/N: I love pirate movie commercial music. Who doesn't. Molly- I'm sorry, my internet cut out. I hate AOL with such a burning passion. Anyway. Something weird? Carole Shelley and Kristin Chenoweth are both in _Bewitched_. Yeah. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

Eagle was _such _a bastard.

"Do you have children now, Fae?" he asked me sweetly.

"Why do you want to know, are you a kidnapper or just nosy?" I responded in an equally saccharine tone.

"Anything that might affect your motivations is my business," he said.

"I can handle my own motivations, Eagle," I said. I quoted myself. "I am not a slave to emotion."

"We all are. We have to train ourselves to overcome it. You've never done it."

"Not me. I don't need to."

What? Love was stronger than just an emotion.

He sighed in disgust and I could hear the rush of air as he turned away.

"What is your _problem_?" I demanded. He had requested a special meeting with me, and we were alone, although neither of us could see the other. "I have been working for you for over nine months since I have been married and had children and have I ever messed up?"

He groaned. "No."

"So why are you harassing me?"

"What about if I ask you to assassinate someone, Elphaba? What is going to go through your head? What questions are you going to ask? And if you don't like the answers, _are you going to be able to do it?_"

"I always would have and always will question the nature of certain assignments, _sir_." I said tightly. "That's why I work for you and not the Wizard."

"That and you have a soul!"

I smiled wryly. "Sometimes I wonder." I stood up, knocking over my chair in the darkness. "And that is the end of the personal interview."

…

As I walked home through the hot August twilight, I couldn't help but think about what Eagle had said. He seemed to take issue with the idea that I might question it when I was told to kill someone. Well, shouldn't I? If what he wanted was an operative who mindlessly obeyed his every whim, he had the wrong woman. In fact, he had the worst person in history for the job. As I walked, I grew angrier and angrier, so that by the time I stalked through the front door it appeared there was a visible storm cloud hanging over my head.

"Whoa," said Fiyero. "Which Gale Forcer isn't going to be walking tomorrow?"

"Mama angwy," I heard Fala whisper to Liir, who nodded vehemently.

"It's not one of them. It's Eagle."

"What'd he do?"

"He's harassing me about my motivations again." I sighed. "Now apparently he has a problem with the continuation of the human race."

Fiyero stared at me. "But I thought he _was-_"

"He _is _human. That's not what I mean."

"Oh." The light went on in his eyes. "So he doesn't _like _the fact that we have children?"

"No. He thinks it will make me ask questions before I kill someone, apparently."

Fiyero's eyes widened. "Does he _want _you to kill someone?"

"No! That's not the point. It's just…" I turned back to Fiyero. "Do I want to work for someone who thinks questioning orders is a bad idea?" He looked at me hard.

"You didn't in college."


	37. Parenthood

**A/N: I will update The Greatest Strength- I promise! I wrote something out for this story, but I decided I liked the basic plot of that better in the other story- you'll see. Soon. I hope. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine**

"Ow!" I stabbed myself with the needle again. "Damn it! I hate this!"

"If you hate it so much, why are you doing it?" asked Fiyero reasonably.

I attacked the small garment with the needle again, trying to hem it- or harm it.

"Because," I growled, "now it's personal."

"Fae, neither the dress nor the thread nor the needle _hates _you."

"But I hate them. I hate them all!" I stabbed myself again and threw Fala's little dress down with a howl. "I give up!"

"Don't you know how to sew?" asked Glinda, floating into the room sans Ariana, who, like the twins, was probably asleep. I love naptime with a passion.

Glinda bent and examined my crooked handiwork.

"Not well, evidently," I said, holding my injured finger. "Blowing up bridges is less dangerous."

Fiyero opened his mouth to debate this. I held up my bleeding finger.

"Have I ever gotten hurt blowing up bridges?" He sulked a little.

"No."

"Have I ever gotten hurt sewing?" I waved the finger in his face. He sighed.

"Yes."

"Case closed. Around me, sewing is more dangerous than heavy explosives."

"Didn't your mother ever teach you to sew?" queried Glinda.

"She drank herself unconscious daily and then she died." I said flatly. "End of the story, end of this line of conversation."

"Sorry, I forgot."

"It's not your fault." _It's mine. Well, the drinking part. Maybe if I'd been…normal…she wouldn't have needed to- wanted to- escape from her life. _

Suddenly I felt Fiyero's hand on my shoulder.

"Fae-"

"I'm _fine_," I said brusquely, and stalked out into the garden.

…

I hadn't had to go to Resistance meeting since the one with Eagle, and I was still questioning my commitment and considering what Eagle was going to make me do. Those hadn't been idle questions- unless of course they had and he was just being an asshole, which was far from out of the question. I was pondering this when I heard screams from inside and an ominous thud.

No.

_I ran back to the room above the corn exchange and opened the door and froze._

_Five, no six, no seven-maybe-eight, Gale Forcers stood beating Fiyero. Blood, so much blood, everywhere- my head spun in circles, dizzying me, as if I were the one who had lost all the crimson mercury painting the room._

Not again.

I ran back inside the house to find a group of Gale Forcers holding my children roughly. Fiyero lay unconscious on the floor. Glinda was punching one of the Gale Forcers ineffectually and screaming bloody murder.

If they didn't give me back my children _right now_, there was going to _be _a bloody murder. Several.

"Put down my children, you bastards!" I yelled, flying at them. I wanted to use my newfound powers, but I couldn't, not without hurting Fala and Liir.

One of them clubbed me before I could duck, and I, too, fell unconscious to the floor.

…

_The Wizard: _

_The doors blew open, seemingly of their own accord and she came storming in like the hurricanes of my world. I could almost see the lightning flashing in her hazel eyes- Irish eyes, those. _

"_God damn you!" – and a temper to match – she shrieked, releasing that energy from her hands. It lifted me up and threw me into the wall. "Damn you to hell." _

_Intense pain flowed through me, then ebbed. _

"_Well, hello," I said. _

"_Give me my children before I kill you, you bastard," she spat. _

"_I'm sorry," I said neutrally. _

_Confusion replaced fury on her face for a moment. _

"_For what?" she asked. But I didn't have to answer. _

_She fell to the floor in a faint. _

…

_I didn't put her in Southstairs or the infirmary. I didn't know why. I put her in a private room, near the one where her children- my grandchildren- were asleep after screaming and kicking themselves to exhaustion. Apparently they took after her. After she'd been carried up to the room, I went in myself. _

_It was the first time I'd actually had an opportunity to _see _her; usually one or the other of us was dodging questions or potentially lethal objects launched into the air. _

_Her long black hair had come loose and fanned out over the pillow. With her face devoid of anger and her defenses down, she looked much younger than her twenty-four years and I felt a strange instinctive vestige of protective instinct flare to life. Cautiously- I didn't deserve to do this, she'd kill me and I knew it- I reached down and tucked the blanket gently around her. Even given my inexperience, when I touched her forehead I knew something was wrong. It felt as if her skin was on fire. She cried out in her sleep and began to shake. _

_I didn't know what was wrong with her- my daughter- but I knew what was right; and for the first time in her life I did it. _

_I sent for Fiyero. _


	38. Reverse Psychology

**A/N: It's nearly two am, so this may be a bit odd…**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but some events and invented characters. **

Elphaba:

_My veins are on fire and I can't breathe or move or think. I am exhausted, and I am unconscious, but I am not asleep. I am alone with myself, and the thought terrifies me. I don't know where I am, or when, or why; my eyes are stuck closed and I can't open them, and I can't remember where I was or what I was doing before this happened. There was something incredibly important that I had to do, had to find, but I just can't remember. _

_I'm too tired to remember. _

The Wizard:

He came, as I knew he would. He was angry- she had been rubbing off on him.

"Where are they, what have you done with them?" he demanded.

"Nothing," I replied, superficially calm. "I need your help, that's all."

"I won't help you!"

"Oh, but I think you'll want to, with this. Follow me."

He did. I led him to Elphaba's room, where she was tossing and turning violently and fighting the air.

"Oh, sweet Lurline," he gasped, and ran to her side. Predictably, after a moment, his eyes flashed to me. "What did you do to her?"

"Nothing," I answered honestly. "Really, nothing, I promise you. She came in here demanding her children, and then she collapsed. I swear to you, that's what happened."

I could see suspicion dancing in Fiyero's eyes, but his concern for Elphaba far outweighed his care for whether or not I was lying. He turned back to her, and tried to pin down her wheeling arms.

"Elphaba-Fabala-Elphie-Fae," I heard him whisper, "it's me. It's Fiyero. Come back, please."

Her eyelids fluttered, and those otherworldly eyes focused for a moment. "Something," she gasped, "have to find something…can't remember…"

Fiyero gave me a cold look. "Bring our children in here," he said, "if you care anything at all, or ever did, for your _daughter_, bring them here."

Something in his tone- and in my own long-dormant heart- forced me to obey.

…

Elphaba:

Something was calling me back to myself. It wasn't my name. No, there it was, my name was there, but so was another word.

_Mama, please, come back. _

And I wasn't hearing it anymore, suddenly, I was saying it.

"_Mama, please, come back," I beg. I am eight and feel younger in my fear. But I can't cry, I must be strong for Nessarose. She has to think everything is all right, she can't be scared. But my mother's hand is cold and empty, and I don't want to be strong. I want to curl up in a ball and scream and sob. I want to shake my mother's dead shoulders and howl at her in rage. How could she do this to me, how could she leave me here, how could she? She cared so much about the health of this baby; she threw out her wine and pills and leaves into the bloody muddy red earth. But this time, she died. If I knew what irony was, I would have found this sadly ironic, dramatically ironic, situationally ironic. Situationally is not a word. Who gives a damn? Not me. I stare at my dead mother and think, _I will never do this.

I will never do this. I couldn't leave Fala and Liir all alone, not even for another minute. I pulled myself, hard, back to the surface. I forced my eyes open, and when I saw my family I was saved. I pulled all three of them into me, and I was back in this world once again.

But I looked over there heads for just a moment, and I could have sworn I saw a look of piercing loneliness on my father's face before it was replaced by his customary expression of sadistic darkness, and I pushed the thought out of my mind.


	39. A Life For A Life

**A/N: I know, I'm very evil for not having updated. I'm sorry. I was distracted by my sister's incessant ranting about the end of _Pirates of the Caribbean II_. She finally went to baseball game with my dad so it's _quiet_. **

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

I expected that we would have to fight our way out, and I was half right. As we emerged from the little room, guards surrounded us. One held a sword to my neck.

"You kill me in front of my children," I informed him, "and my ghost will torment you for the rest of your life. When you're asleep, or when you're in bed doing-"

"Elphaba!" said Fiyero.

"You get the idea," I said.

"Fine," replied the guard, roughly jerking Fala from my arms.

"Mama!" she cried pitifully.

"I'll just kill them first."

"No!" Fiyero and I cried at the same time, both of us straining forward as Liir too began to cry, but just as my energy was about to explode again and even possibly hurt Fala, the Wizard came running out.

"Stand down!" he told his guards, and they did. I took Fala back from the leader and held her close, backing away, nearer to Fiyero.

"Just…go," said the Wizard. He sounded as if he were choking.

"_What!_" I gasped.

"Just _do what he says_, before he changes his mind," Fiyero muttered.

"A life for a life," the Wizard hissed low, so only I could hear. "Remember that well."

Stunned, I could only nod as Fiyero used his free arm to pull me outside.

_He knows something. What does he know? Why did he say that? Why did he _do _that? He had us. He had me right where he wanted. Why…? _

Why indeed.

…

"Our next objective is to take out the Wizard," Eagle said. There were several gasps. Of course this had always been our main goal, but none of us had expected it…now. Not in the middle of the season, not when the economy had finally begun to grow and the drought to lift, and support for the Wizard was higher than ever.

Always before, when someone would ask when we were going to try to kill the Wizard, Eagle had said we were going to wait for the opportune moment. Even with what little experience in the world of politics I had, this did _not _seem like the opportune moment.

"As for _who_," Eagle went on. Despite the darkness, I could feel his eyes sweeping the room and finally alighting on me. _What the hell? Is that what he meant, before? _Pieces clicked together before my eyes, but I still couldn't see the entirety of the picture they formed. _But how did he know? Which he do I even mean? What is going on? _

"Fae," he said, telling me what I already knew. And a few more pieces began to click. _This is not being done for the right reasons. This is…this is a _test. _He is putting our entire operation in jeopardy in order to_ test_ me? _I hadn't been lying before when I said I was too inexperienced and noticeable to be selected for this assignment. Now, I was even more unlikely. I'd been locked up in that damn palace _three times. _The Wizard _knew _who I was. I was his…his daughter. _Damn _Eagle and his half-formed idea of _fixing _my motivations. I knew what he was doing. He wanted me not to be attached to my children because they could kill me someday, so I shouldn't let them put any assignment in jeopardy, or something to that effect. That was _bullshit. _Not only did it not make sense, I wasn't the one putting _our single most important goal _in jeopardy, that was _him_. And damn him to hell for it, too. He was teaching me a lesson and I did _not _appreciate it.

"Will you do it?" he asked. I could feel him staring at me. Though I knew he couldn't see it, I met his gaze unflinchingly.

"Yes," I said, but it wasn't another phrase that was ringing through my mind, another relative of mine in danger.

_A life for a life. Remember that. _


	40. Who Holds the Strings?

**A/N: It's been a while even though I've written this. Molly- I'm listening to _The Last Five Years – Climbing Uphill_, actually, and I love it. I love it so much, it's incredible. **

**Whoa, is it hard to write the Fiyeraba scene while listening to _I Could Never Rescue You. _Antidotes, Emily… I know this is short. Anyway.**

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

**Dedicated to: Molly for inspiration and the song "The Next Ten Minutes" for the same thing. **

I couldn't sleep that night. I couldn't do it. I knew I couldn't kill him, even though he had tried to kill me. _You're going to let him do that, Elphaba? Let him play with your mind, let him _win

I felt the old rage flow through me, and suddenly I did want to kill him, for all that he had done to me and all that he had never done for me.

_I just want a parent, damn it! One parent who genuinely loves me, is that really so much to ask? _

I hadn't realized I was sobbing aloud until Fiyero turned the light on and looked at me.

"Fae," he said, "What's wrong?"

I tried to calm myself but was sobbing too hard.

"I just want my father to love me, one of them to love me, I can't kill him, I can't but how many will it save? I can't do this, I can't!"

"Fae, are you talking about the Wizard?"

I remembered suddenly that Fiyero hadn't been there at the meeting.

"I'm supposed to kill him," I said. "You heard what he said to me, though- he knew, he knows, how the hell does he know?"

Suddenly, I could identify the feeling that had descended over me since even before the assignment…since the Wizard had said "A life for a life," actually. I recognized it from Shiz. I was being tested, manipulated, pawned. But who were the puppetmasters here? The Wizard or Eagle? Could it be both? It seemed impossible. The reasons why they would be testing me _had _to be at cross purposes. Unless Eagle was also testing me to see if I might be persuaded to work for the Wizard, which would make him a spy…

But that went against everything I'd ever believed, everything that was supposed to be; and my furiously racing mind screamed against it.

The years peeled away and I was near the end of my time at Shiz again; eighteen and realizing that rather than teaching me to think for myself- that eternal paradox- our beloved headmistress was raising us to be governmental pawns. That had infuriated me- she had been trusted to objectively educate us and she had betrayed that trust. Sometimes I wondered if my whole life wasn't a test- from the Wizard, Madame Morrible, or even some higher power; how much could a human take?

"I'm being used again," I told Fiyero. "I can feel it."

"But by who?"

"I don't know, and that's why I don't know what to do." I laughed. "I don't know who to defy."

Fiyero looked at me seriously; his beautiful blue eyes boring into the soul I thought I didn't have.

"Don't define yourself in terms of other people," he told me. "You never did before."

"Oh, Yero," I said, "everyone does to some extent. I _am _human, you know."

"I know," he told me, and I let myself go, into his arms, into his kiss, and tried to forget everything. Just for this moment in time. Just for ten minutes. Just to be.


	41. Confidence

**A/N: Okay, this is the last chapter! But there's definitely going to be a sequel, and I've already started writing that, so it'll start soon. Thanks to everyone who reviewed, especially to Molly, and to Jeff even if he reviewed only once and then bombarded me with comments via IM- don't you know that's what reviews are for?- and to Kari even if she _didn't _read this one. But she will, oh yes she will…**

**Disclaimer: Not mine. **

I was going. I was going to the palace and I was going to do _something_, but I had no idea what. I had a knife and whatever the hell these powers were, but I also had a father and a conscience and my father also had some vestige of a conscience, too, for he had had me and my family exactly where he wanted us, and he had let us go.

Or maybe that was just self-preservation. Even so, the nagging feeling of being tested had pulled a pervading depression over me, and I felt at odds with myself. Being who I am, this was nothing new to me, but the feeling had nearly disappeared during the past almost two years.

Fiyero was not going with me. In fact, Fiyero didn't know I was going here. He thought I was just at another meeting. I couldn't risk telling him, not after what had nearly happened last time. I couldn't have him follow me, irrationally. The Wizard already knew where I lived, and yet- I wasn't so sure it was him I was worried about. I wondered about his name. He was a caricature, like me, to the public. _No, Elphaba- Fae- damn you, shut up! _

I couldn't think about it, I couldn't. For the past few days I'd had a nearly constant and almost irrepressible urge to cry, but I'd instead contented myself with being even more sarcastic and more of a bitch than usual, unfortunately for all those sharing my abode. Glinda had given me a knowing look.

"It's hormones," she'd said.

"IT IS NOT HORMONES!" I had yelled back at her. She hadn't gotten sad or angry, she'd just smirked and retreated, undaunted, into the kitchen.

I have _got _to stop rubbing off on that woman, or she'll be the death of me.

I arrived at the palace at twilight, possibly my favorite time of day. I walked around to the side of it, where I knew the Wizard's office was. I mounted my broom and rode it up to the window, even disallowing myself the usual joy of flying.

The window had been repaired; with a vague and incomplete sense of satisfaction, I kicked it in again. At first I thought no one was there, but atop a half-finished letter and beside a quill leaking ink all over the desk the Wizard- my father's- head lay, asleep. I leaned the broom against the sill and walked around the room, familiar from my memorization of it before our first escape from Southstairs. I examined the books on the shelf. They were cloudily familiar, yet I knew that I had never actually seen any of them before. I took one down and skimmed through it; an almost palpable penumbra of strange names and people and places ascended into the air along with the real, accompanying dust. I jerked myself out of my reverie and turned back to the man sleeping on the desk, and my heart filled with a sudden hatred for him. _Sleeping_, how could he sleep? Now, or at night, with all that he had done? I pulled the knife out from its place around my ankle and approached my father's sleeping form. I held it carefully against his jugular.

"Goodnight…Daddy," I whispered, intending it to be sarcastic, but it came out soft and plaintive, near tears. I pulled the knife back, ready to cut, but then he stirred and sat up.

"Elphaba?" his eyes flickered to the knife in my hand. "Wha-what are you doing?"

"I don't know," I murmured. I looked up and met his blue eyes, light and clear, offering no evidence of our shared blood. "What's your name?" I asked.

He looked at me uncertainly.

"Oscar," he said at last. I nodded.

"All right," I said. I handed him the knife, realizing with absolute certainty that I was simply not capable of killing this man who had given me life and tried- but never too hard, I realized- to take it away. "A life for a life," I told him. "Remember that your mythological Wicked Witch couldn't kill you when you make your next pronouncement." I grabbed my broom before I could think about what I was doing and leapt out the window, with the newfound confidence of one who knows she will not fall.

I was going somewhere. I was going home.


End file.
